Nicolas Sarkozy: Former French president sentenced to five years in prison - what did he do, what is his net worth, who is his wife?
A Paris court has sentenced former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison.
He will be jailed even if he appeals, after finding him guilty in his trial for alleged illegal campaign financing by Libya. The court said the date of his incarceration will be decided later, sparing the 70-year-old the humiliation of being marched out of the courtroom by police officers and going straight to jail.
The court found Sarkozy guilty of criminal association in a plot from 2005 to 2007 to finance his campaign with funds from Libya in exchange for diplomatic favours. But it cleared him of three other charges, including passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of the embezzlement of public funds.
The court also found two of Sarkozy’s closest associates when he was president – former ministers Claude Gueant and Brice Hortefeux – guilty of criminal association but likewise acquitted them of some other charges. Overall, the ruling suggested that the court believed that the men conspired to seek Libyan funding for Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign but that judges were not convinced that the conservative leader himself was directly involved in the funding effort or that any Libyan money ended up being used in his winning campaign.
The chief judge, in an hours-long reading of the lengthy verdict, said Sarkozy allowed his close associates to reach out to Libyan authorities “to obtain or try to obtain financial support in Libya for the purpose of securing campaign financing”. But the court also said it could not determine with certainty that Libyan money ended up financing Sarkozy’s campaign.
Still, under French law, a corrupt scheme can still be a crime even if money was not paid or cannot be proven, the court explained. Sarkozy, accompanied by his wife, the singer and model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was present in the courtroom, which was also filled with reporters and members of the public.
His three adult sons were also in the room. Overall, the verdict suggested the former president and his co-defendants had conspired to seek Libyan campaign funding - but not that he was directly involved or that money was actually used.
The judge said Sarkozy had allowed his associates to reach out to Libyan authorities "to obtain or try to obtain financial support in Libya for the purpose of securing campaign financing".
Who is he and his wife?
Earlier this year, Sarkozy was stripped of his Legion of Honour medal, France's highest accolade, after he was convicted of corruption in a separate case. He was found guilty of trying to bribe a magistrate for information about a legal case in which he was implicated in 2014 and sentenced to a year on electronic tag, of which six months were suspended. After three months, it was ruled he could remove the monitoring device due to his age.
In another case last year, he was sentenced to a year on house arrest for illegal campaign financing during his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid, having spent almost twice the allowed amount. Despite his criminal record, Sarkozy has remained an influential figure within the French Right.
Nicolas Sarkozy, born on January 28, 1955, is a French politician who served as president of France from 2007 to 2012. Sarkozy, born to immigrant Greek and Hungarian parents, qualified as a lawyer in 1981 and studied political science.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni decided to get married in 2008, after a two-month courtship. She is a composer and actress, known for Midnight in Paris (2011), 500 Days of Summer (2009) and The Lake House (2006). In 2021 The Sun reported that he had a net worth of around £12 million.