A Paris court on Thursday sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison after finding him guilty of criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his 2007 campaign with funds from Libya, a verdict that the still-influential conservative leader denounced as “a scandal.”
Sarkozy was tried on charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of the embezzlement of public funds and criminal association. Prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy had knowingly benefited from what they described as a ‘corruption pact’ with Gaddafi’s government.
The conservative Sarkozy denounced the ruling as a humiliation for the country:
“If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison. But with my head held high. I am innocent. This injustice is a scandal,” he said with his wife, the singer and model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, at his side.
“I ask the French people — whether they voted for me or not, whether they support me or not — to grasp what has just happened. Hatred truly knows no bounds,” he said.
“Should I appear in handcuffs before the Court of Appeal? Those who hate me this much, think it’s humiliating for me. What they humiliated today is France.”
The court said close associates of Sarkozy, Guéant and Hortefeux, held secret meetings in 2005 with Abdullah al-Senoussi, the brother-in-law and intelligence chief of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
The Daily Mail, no friend to the right-wing, outlines the case against the right-wing leader:
The accusations trace their roots to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gadhafi himself said the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.
In 2012, the French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a 50 million-euro funding agreement. Sarkozy denounced the document as a forgery and sued for defamation.
French magistrates later said that the memo appeared to be authentic, though no conclusive evidence of a completed transaction was presented at the three-month Paris trial.
Investigators also looked into a series of trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy when he served as interior minister from 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff.
In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart that he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted his statement.
If you go by that report, and that the main charge is “passive corruption,” you have to wonder if the left-wing court just wanted to put the right-wing Sarkozy in prison.
Sarkozy is still very popular with a large portion of the more conservative French.
Two of his associates were also found guilty. One served two years and another had his sentence delayed due to poor health.
He is 70 and must start serving his sentence before his appeal is heard. His lawyers will set a date within the next month.
At least they didn’t put him in shackles like the Biden Democrat regime did.
Imprisoning conservative leaders on trumped up charges has become a leftist pattern world-wide. Didn’t They just do the same in Brazil? It was an old soviet era tactic.