Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to prison in 2021 for corruption. The judge will rule on Wednesday in the appeal he filed. This preceded it.
Sarkozy was convicted of bribing a judge and abusing his power. He was sentenced to three years in prison, one of which was suspended. The judge ruled that he should serve his sentence with house arrest. In addition, he would receive an ankle bracelet.
The former president is said to have bribed judge Gilbert Azibert together with his lawyer Thierry Herzog. That played out when he was president, from 2007 to 2012. Prosecutors say the two wanted to bribe the judge in exchange for information about an investigation into payments Sarkozy received during his 2007 presidential campaign.
Judge Azibert was offered a job in Monaco by Sarkozy in exchange for information. In the end, Azibert himself was also convicted.
Sarkozy was caught because he was wiretapped by prosecutors. His phone, among other things, was tapped. The former president conducted telephone calls under the pseudonym Paul Bismuth.
In one of those conversations he mentioned an open position in Monaco, while asking a judge for information. This was bribery, judges and prosecutors ruled. He would eventually also have received the information from Azibert.
According to the judge, Sarkozy formed a “corrupt pact” with his lawyer and Azibert. Herzog and Azibert were also convicted, including for breaching their professional secrecy. They appealed together with Sarkozy.
It was not just this conviction. Sarkozy was also found guilty of illegal financing practices during his election campaign in 2012. The court in Paris ruled that later in 2021.
This case revolved around the so-called Bygmalion affair. Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, and his campaign team and associates spent the first months of 2012 throwing money at him for re-election. In the end, 20 million euros more was said to have been spent on the election campaign than was legally allowed. Sarkozy was also sentenced to a year of house arrest in this case.
Sarkozy is the first French former president ever to be prosecuted for corruption during his presidency. But he is not the only former president convicted of corruption.
Sarkozy’s predecessor Jacques Chirac (1932-2019) was once sentenced to a suspended prison sentence after his presidency. But that was because of cheating in the time when he was mayor of Paris before.
The verdict in the Sarkozy case will follow around 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Then it will become clear whether the prison sentence, which is not really a prison sentence, will be dropped. Sarkozy has always maintained his innocence.
2023-05-16 20:00:00
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