Former French President Sarkozy sentenced to 5 years over Libya campaign financing

(CN) — Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, is set to spend five years in prison after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy on Thursday in the trial investigating Libya’s involvement in his 2007 presidential campaign financing.

It’s a historic ruling, marking the first time that a French president will actually serve a sentence behind bars — even if he appeals. Few saw this coming.

“If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison, but with my head held high,” he told a crowd of reporters at the courthouse. “Those who hate me so much think they can humiliate me. What they have humiliated today is France, the image of France.”

Sarkozy was also fined about $120,000 and handed a five-year ban on holding public office. Prosecutors had recommended a seven-year prison sentence out of the maximum 10, and Sarkozy had denied all charges. He was acquitted on three other charges including embezzlement and corruption, and maintained his overall innocence.

Nathalie Gavarino, the presiding judge of the trial, concluded that Sarkozy had let his officials “obtain or try to obtain” funding from Libya in the run-up to his campaign. The planned “corruption,” she said, risked “undermining citizens’ confidence in those who represent them.”

Sarkozy was on trial alongside 12 others, including three former government ministers.

Claude Guéant, the former French minister of interior, was found guilty of passive corruption and falsification. Although he was sentenced to six years in prison, the court did not issue a detention warrant citing concerns over his age, 80, and fragile health.

Brice Hortefeux, also a former French minister of interior, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and sentenced to two years in prison. He will be serving out his term even in the event of an appeal, like Sarkozy.

“If we’re optimistic, it will have a cathartic effect, a purifying effect, so to speak,” Ludovic Renard, a political scientist and professor at Sciences Po Bordeaux, told Courthouse News after the sentencing. “All of these transparency laws regarding French political life that emerged in the late 1990s gradually allowed for oversight to ensure that the electoral process wasn’t skewed by illegally obtained funding.”

Both Guéant and Hortefeux were found guilty of trying to obtain covert campaign financing for Sarkozy’s presidential campaign through Libya, which was ruled by the autocratic leader Moammar Gadhafi at the time.

Although the court couldn’t establish that the plans ultimately went through, calculating such a scheme was enough to convict for criminal conspiracy.

It was Saif al-Islam — the son of Gadhafi  — who first sounded alarm bells over the funding, which prompted the investigation to be opened in 2013.

Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese businessman, played a key role in the case through claiming to have proof that the French campaign was largely funded by Libya. Takieddine died on Tuesday, his lawyer Elise Arfi told French news outlets, two days prior to the verdict. She said he passed away in a Beirut hospital following complications from a heart attack.

But Gadhafi himself also fueled the narrative. Prosecutors said he bragged to the media about contributing 50 million euros (about $58 million) to Sarkozy’s presidential campaign.

The deal was apparently in exchange for diplomatic leverage. The government said that suitcases containing millions of euros in cash were smuggled into France. The affair had been labeled a “corruption pact.”

The trial coincided with an unprecedented moment for French politics. Just over a week before it came to a close, Marine Le Pen, the extreme-right leader of France’s National Rally, was convicted of embezzlement and banned from running for public office for five years.

Le Pen has already spoken out about the sentencing, calling it “a great danger with regard to the great principles of our law, first and foremost among which is the presumption of innocence” in a post on X.

The rhetoric of France’s judicial system being out to “punish” its politicians is unusually prevalent. Both Sarkozy and Le Pen likened their respective trials to a political witch hunt, similarly to how U.S. President Donald Trump had framed the narrative around his legal troubles.

Renard sees both optimistic and pessimistic outcomes potentially arising from the sentencing.

“Perhaps this will free us from our demons, allow us to feel better, cleansed, because citizens can say that justice has been served and that there is a true separation of powers in France between the judiciary and the executive, that’s the optimistic view,” he told Courthouse News. “Then there’s a more pessimistic view, which is that it will further fuel the climate of distrust, not to mention disgust, that citizens may feel towards political power… and it will lead to political manipulation, as Ms. Le Pen is already doing, by demanding that the immediate execution of sentences be reconsidered, since she herself is facing the same thing.”

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