A French appeals court has upheld a prison sentence against the former president Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption and influence-peddling – maintaining he should serve one-year’s detention at home with an electronic bracelet.
Sarkozy was originally convicted in 2021 of trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. It was the first time in modern French history that a former president was given a prison sentence for corruption. He had appealed against the verdict.
Sarkozy, 68, who was France’s rightwing president from 2007 to 2012 and remains an influential figure, continues to deny wrongdoing and his lawyers said he would challenge the ruling at France’s highest court.
“Nicolas Sarkozy is innocent,” his lawyer Jacqueline Laffont told reporters. “We will take this all the way. We are just at the beginning of the process.”
Sarkozy’s full sentence was three years in prison, which includes two years suspended and one year that could be served at home with an electronic bracelet. He was also banned from public office for three years.
If Sarkozy does challenge the verdict in France’s highest court, the court of cassation, any potential sentence would not begin until that court has ruled.
The case had centred around allegations that Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog had formed a “corruption pact” with a judge to obtain and share information about a legal investigation.
The trial came after investigators wiretapped Sarkozy’s two official phone lines, and discovered he also had a third unofficial phone line taken out in 2014 under the name “Paul Bismuth”, through which he communicated with Herzog. The contents of these phone calls led to the 2021 corruption verdict.
On the first day of the appeal hearing in December last year, Sarkozy said he had “never corrupted anybody”.
The case is one of many legal investigations that have hung over Sarkozy since he left office.
He will be retried on appeal from November 2023 in the so-called Bygmalion case, in which he was at first sentenced to one year in prison. In that case, the prosecution accused Sarkozy’s team of spending nearly double the legal limit on his lavish 2012 re-election campaign, using false billing from a public relations firm called Bygmalion. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Last week, French prosecutors demanded Sarkozy face trial over alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential election campaign.
Financial crimes prosecutors said Sarkozy and 12 others should face trial over allegations they sought millions of euros in financing from the regime of then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for the campaign.
Sarkozy is accused of corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealing the embezzlement of public funds. He rejects all the charges.
Investigating judges have not yet ruled whether a trial will go ahead.
Despite his legal problems, Sarkozy still enjoys considerable influence and popularity on the right of French politics and regularly has conversations with President Emmanuel Macron.
Before Sarkozy, the only French leader to be convicted in a criminal trial was his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption over a fake jobs scandal relating to his time as Paris mayor.
