The court is considering a case of fraud with the financing of the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012, which he lost. In March, the former French president was already sentenced in the case of influence peddling
Nicolas Sarkozy
At the trial in Paris on the financing of the 2012 election campaign, prosecutors asked the court to punish former President Nicolas Sarkozy with one year in prison, but for six months the sentence should be suspended, Le Monde reports.
Also, Sarkozy must pay a fine of & euro;3750, according to the prosecution.
The trial began on May 20 and was named Bygmalion in the press, after the PR agency that served Sarkozy’s 2012 election campaign. The prosecution believes that the election headquarters of the politician used fake accounts to hide the excess of legal expenses for the presidential campaign.
As part of this case, 14 defendants were charged.
On March 1, 2021, Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended, in the case of wiretapping. However, the court then decided that the former president can serve a year of imprisonment not in prison, but at home, if he wears an electronic bracelet.
According to the prosecution, Sarkozy in 2014, no longer being president, through his lawyer tried to bribe the judge of the Court of Cassation Gilbert Azibera, offering to arrange him for a prestigious post in Monaco. In exchange, the former head of state wanted to get information about the investigation of the case of illegal financing of histhe 2007 election campaign. The court considered these actions of Sarkozy to be influence peddling and corruption. Claims in the case about which he wanted to get information from Sarkozy were dropped in 2013: he was suspected of receiving more than $ 100 thousand in cash from Liliane Bettencourt, the richest woman in the world, the daughter of the founder of L & # 39;Oreal.
Sarkozy himself said that he never tried to give protection to Aziberu. Sarkozy’s lawyer Jacqueline Laffont argued that the prosecutor’s office has no reason to conclude that during the negotiations, the ex-president hinted at a violation of the law. “It was just a friendly chat,” she says.
Sarkozy became the second French president in recent history to receive a court verdict. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was found guilty in 2011 of creating fictitious jobs in 1977 and 1995. As a result of the trial, he was sentenced to two years of probation. The court’s decision was also influenced by the fact that at the time of the verdict, Chirac had serious health problems.