French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption and influence peddling.
President from 2007 to 2012, he was found guilty of trying to illegally obtain information from a senior magistrate in 2014 about an ongoing investigation into his campaign finances.
The conviction and sentence were dramatic, unexpected and historic as the 66-year-old is the first president to have been sentenced to jail in France’s modern history.
Sarkozy had repeatedly declared his innocence and dismissed the charges as an “insult to my intelligence”.
His lawyer says he will appeal. Sarkozy will remain free during that process which could take years.
In the ruling, Judge Christine Mée said the conservative politician “knew what [he] was doing was wrong”, adding that his actions and those of his lawyer had given the public “a very bad image of justice”.
Dubbed the “wiretapping case,” it began in 2013 when investigators bugged phones belonging to Sarkozy and his lawyer Herzog, in the context of an inquiry against Sarkozy.
They discovered that the two men promised senior magistrate Gilbert Azibert a prestigious position in Monaco, in exchange for information about an ongoing inquiry into claims that Sarkozy had accepted illegal payments from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his successful 2007 presidential campaign.
While Sarkozy was not banned from holding public office, the verdict, delivered on Monday afternoon, is likely to quash his hopes of returning to public life in time for next year’s presidential election.
His center-right Les Républicains (LR) party has been struggling to come up with a credible candidate since Sarkozy’s former prime minister François Fillon was engulfed in scandal during the 2017 presidential race, opening the way for Emmanuel Macron to win.
