The criminal court in Paris sentenced the former French president to 1 year in prison
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty today by the Paris Criminal Court of illegally financing his election campaign in 2012, world agencies reported.
Sarkozy was not present at the ruling. The prosecutor’s office asked for one year in prison, of which 6 months probation. The court imposed the same sentence – 1 year “imprisonment”.
However, the former French president is unlikely to go to prison immediately, as he is expected to appeal the decision.
According to prosecutors in the case, Sarkozy’s campaign has used nearly twice as much as 22.5m euros allowed in France to spend on election campaigns. Sarkozy’s party’s campaign headquarters has hired a friendly public relations agency to cover up the costs.
The trial against the former French president and 13 other defendants began on May 20th. The case is known as “Bigmalion” after the public relations agency affiliated with Sarkozy’s People’s Movement party. The former French president has been accused of allowing excessive costs to be incurred, despite several clear warnings that there is a risk of exceeding the spending limit. The prosecution also alleges that Sarkozy took advantage of a fraudulent scheme with false invoices, which allowed him to have much more money than allowed by law.
The former French president told the court that he was not involved in the logistics activities related to his re-election campaign.
The other defendants – former Bigmalion employees and Sarkozy party officials – are accused of organizing and complicity in a fraudulent system of issuing false invoices. The only one to plead guilty was lawyer Jerome Lavrio, who was Sarkozy’s deputy director of the election campaign and head of the office of the president of the Union for the People’s Movement, Jean-François Cope.
In early March, Sarkozy became the first former French president since 1958 to be sentenced to prison. He received a 3-year sentence, of which 2 years probation, for corruption and trafficking in another case, and is now appealing his sentence.
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