Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of the French Republic, has been definitively sentenced to three years in prison for corruption and influence peddling. He will not have to go to prison, but he will spend a whole year under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. In addition, the sentence, which confirms a previous sentence, includes three years of disqualification from any elected political office. Sarkozy will now be summoned before a judge to have the bracelet fitted. This is an unprecedented conviction in the country, the first of arrest against a former head of state, which has raised a legal storm, due to the legal interpretation it entails, and politically, due to the important influence that the tenant of the Elysée between 2007 and 2012 still has in the country.
Sarkozy has already announced through his lawyer that he will “be satisfied with the sanction imposed”, but will go “in the coming weeks” to the European Court of Human Rights “to obtain the guarantee of the rights that the French judges have denied him.” The problem for the former president is that this appeal does not prevent the sentences imposed from being carried out. “I am not willing to accept the profound injustice that has been done to me,” the former head of state wrote on [su] perfect innocence.” “I will assume my responsibilities and face all its consequences,” he added.
The only good news for Sarkozky is that from the age of 70 (he turns 70 on January 28), he will be able to request conditional release, a measure that, however, is not always granted.
The case for which he has been convicted, also known as Bismuthpoints to Sarkozky for having established in 2014, together with his historical lawyer Thierry Herzog, a “corruption pact” with Gilbert Azibert, high magistrate of the Court of Cassation, so that he would provide information and try to influence an appeal presented by Sarkozy in the case Bettencourt [un caso contra el expresidente de la República]. This, in exchange for a promised “push” for an honorary position in Monaco. This maneuver reached the investigators who had tapped the secondary telephone line with which Sarkozy communicated with his lawyer, knowing that the officer had already been tapped for another case.
All three men received the same sentence, and in the case of the lawyer, he was banned from practicing law for three years. The decision in this case comes while the former resident of the Elysée must appear from January 6, and for four months, before the Paris court, in the case of suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.
