A Paris court on Thursday found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of a charge of criminal association in the trial over the alleged illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign with funds from the government of then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The court has sentenced Sarkozy to five years in prison, with a detention order with deferred effect. He is expected to appeal the verdict. However, it was also ruled that he will be imprisoned even if he files the appeal. The date of his imprisonment is yet to be determined.
The 70-year-old former president was acquitted of three other charges: passive corruption, illicit financing of his campaign, and covering up the embezzlement of public funds.
According to the court, Sarkozy participated between 2005 and 2007 in a scheme that sought to finance his run for the Elysée with Libyan resources in exchange for diplomatic favors. The former president has denied the accusations throughout the three-month judicial process.
The suspicions about this murky financing date back to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gaddafi himself claimed that the Libyan government had secretly delivered millions of euros to support Sarkozy’s campaign.
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In 2012, the French media outlet Mediapart published what it claimed was a document from Libyan intelligence services referring to a financing agreement worth 50 million euros. Sarkozy denounced the document as false and filed a defamation lawsuit, but French magistrates later claimed it appeared to be authentic, although no conclusive evidence that the transaction had taken place was presented during the trial.
