A Paris court on Thursday sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to a five-year prison term "with deferred effect," accompanied by an immediate five-year ban from holding public office and a €100,000 fine.
The sentence followed Sarkozy's conviction for criminal conspiracy, following claims by prosecutors that he accepted illegal campaign donations from the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in order to win the 2007 election, reports Euro News.
Although the conviction, Sarkozy was acquitted of a number of charges, including passive corruption, embezzlement of Libyan state funds, and illicit election funding. Judges explained that the criminal conspiracy verdict was based on his involvement in a clique blamed for coordinating corruption from 2005 to 2007.
Sarkozy, France's president from 2007 to 2012, is eligible to appeal the verdict. Due to his age, he could also ask for conditional release. Sarkozy will be invited within a month by the public prosecutor's office, which will inform him of when he should report to prison to serve his sentence. At 70 years old, Sarkozy is the first former French President to be convicted of a crime so serious.
Prosecutors argued that Sarkozy struck a secret deal with Gaddafi in return for campaign funding, asserting that he worked to rehabilitate Libya’s international image and promised favorable treatment for Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, Abdallah Senoussi, who had been convicted in France over a bombing that killed 170 people.
During the three-month trial earlier this year, judges examined trips to Tripoli in 2005, offshore money transfers, and claims that Sarkozy’s administration shielded Gaddafi’s former chief of staff, Bechir Saleh. They also looked into the suspicious death of a Libyan oil minister who had documented payments “for Sarkozy.”
The ex-president has denied the allegations all along, claiming there is "not a shred of proof" connecting his campaign to Libyan money. His lawyers assert that the prosecution is based on questionable documents and suspect evidence. Eleven other defendants, three of them former ministers, are also involved, Euro News stated.
This is merely the most recent of Sarkozy's court affairs. He has already been convicted in the "Bygmalion affair," which involved overspending on his 2012 campaign, and in the "Bismuth case" of corruption and influence peddling. In earlier this year, he received a sentence of wearing an electronic ankle bracelet between January and May. He has also appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
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