He former president of france Nicolas Sarkozy was given three years in prison, two to be spared from service, on appeal for a corruption offense committed in 2014, the same sentence for which he was first sentenced in March 2021.
Sarkozy, the first head of state to receive an effective prison sentence, will not enter prison, as the court specified in his sentence that he could serve the sentence under house arrest and with an electronic bracelet.
Everything indicates that Sarkozy, retired from the political front since 2016 but very influential among French conservatives, will appeal the sentence to the Supreme Court, so he will not have to serve that sentence yet.
The former president was first sentenced in March 2021 to three years in prison, two of them exempted from compliance, for a crime committed in 2014, two years after leaving power, when, according to the sentence, he Use your influence to get benefit from another cause.
During an appeals hearing last December, the prosecutor’s office requested that sentence be reduced to three years of compliance, but the court has been harsher with Sarkozy.
Two years after leaving the Elysee, Sarkozy tried to obtain judicial leverage from a higher magistrate, something that came to light from wiretapping, which led to another investigation.
The court also sentenced the other two defendants, Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog, to three years in prison, two to be exempted from compliance, in addition to a three-year ban from practicing his profession; and Magistrate Gilbert Azibert was deprived of his civil rights for three years with the same punishment.
None of them will have to go to jail.
The sentence for Sarkjoy is particularly harsh because, as explained by the president of the court, “he took advantage of his position as former president (…) to obtain personal gain.”
The case, he continued, “attempts against the trust that citizens can legitimately expect from justice.”
Although Sarkozy has always denied his guilt, the only way he can prove it is to the Supreme Court. You have five days to file that appeal.
It is a fresh judicial blow for the man who presided over France between 2007 and 2012, who was also sentenced to one year in prison in September 2021 for irregular financing of the electoral campaign for the 2012 presidential elections.
The President also appealed that second sentence, which would be appealed the following November.
Sarkozy faces a third legal front, as the national financial prosecutor’s office last week requested he appear with money from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime for financing his 2007 presidential campaign.
