Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced Thursday to one year in prison, found guilty in the so-called “Bygmalion” case on the illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign, seven months after another conviction that had made him the first former president of the Fifth French Republic to be sentenced to prison.
Nicolas Sarkozy will not go to prison. His sentence will be directly adjusted, said the court.
The sentence pronounced is higher than the requisitions of the prosecution which had proposed a year including six months suspended.
The former president’s lawyer has announced that he will appeal.
In March, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first former French president (2007-2012) to be sentenced to prison – three years, one of which was closed – for corruption and influence peddling, in a so-called “wiretapping” case. in which he was prosecuted for an alleged attempt to bribe a judge. He appealed, thus de facto suspending this sentence.
“American shows”
Thursday, sentences ranging from two years to three and a half years in prison, part of which suspended, were pronounced against his 13 co-convicts in this “Bygmalion” file on the illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign.
Nicolas Sarkozy, absent from the hearing on Thursday, “continued the organization of meetings “, Underlined the president of the court Caroline Viguier. “He had been warned in writing of the risk of exceeding” the legal ceiling, she said again when reading the judgment.
“It was not his first campaign, he had experience as a candidate,” continued the magistrate. Nicolas Sarkozy “voluntarily omitted to exercise control over the expenses incurred”.
In the end, the cost of the campaign was, according to the prosecution, at least 42.8 million, nearly double the legal ceiling at the time.
During the campaign for his re-election in 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy was a “casual candidate”, asking for “a meeting a day”, “American shows” and let the expenses slip away without worrying about it, had supported the prosecutor’s office in his indictment.
An illegal assembly between the party of the majority of the time, the UMP – which Mr. Sarkozy will rename Les Républicains (LR) thereafter – and the company organizing meetings Bygmalion, would have covered this sumptuary campaign.
Unlike his 13 co-defendants (former executives of the campaign and the UMP as well as the Bygmalion company), Nicolas Sarkozy was not blamed for the double billing system imagined to hide the explosion in authorized campaign expenses .
He was only tried for “illegal campaign financing”.
But he “undoubtedly” benefited from the fraud, having means much greater than those authorized by law, at least 42.8 million, or nearly double the legal ceiling at the time.
Nicolas Sarkozy had denied everything altogether. ” A fable ! He had carried away at the bar.
“Where is the hectic campaign?” Where is the solid gold campaign? He chanted, taking everyone to task.
“It would have been seen”
“There were false invoices and fictitious agreements, it is true”. But “the money was not in my campaign, otherwise it would have been seen”, had hammered the former French president, estimating that Bygmalion – founded by very close to his rival Jean-François Cope, then boss of the UMP party – had “gorged” on its campaign.
His defense had pleaded for release. “He did not sign any estimate, he did not sign any invoice, he accepted all the restrictions that were asked of him. He is far from being a hysterical, insatiable candidate, ”his lawyer, Me Gesche Le Fur, had put forward.
Unlike his co-defendants present every day, Nicolas Sarkozy had only come to the hearing for his questioning. A way of placing oneself “above the fray” which had ulcerated the floor.
The “total casualness” of the one who “visibly regrets nothing” is “like the casualness in his campaign,” had launched the prosecutor Vanessa Perrée.
Revealed two years after the defeat of Mr. Sarkozy, the scandal had led to serial political explosions in the French right.
“There are fourteen defendants and almost as many versions”. Most “saw nothing, knew nothing, heard nothing, they were victims of manipulation or served as fuses”, had mocked the prosecution, for whom their guilt is “no doubt”.
A central question, however, will remain unanswered, admitted the prosecutor. “Who ordered the system? We do not have enough elements to demonstrate it ”.
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