Former French president Sarkozy found guilty of illegal campaign financing receives 1 year sentence

Pascal Rossignol Reuters Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives for a hearing in a trial over alleged illegal financing of his failed re-election campaign in 2012, at the courthouse in Paris, France, June 15, 2021.

PARIS â€" Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of having illegally financed his unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign, marking another defeat in court for the 66-year-old, who was already found guilty and sentenced to prison in a separate trial earlier this year.

The trial that resulted in his second conviction on Thursday centered around accusations that his conservative party falsified accounts during his unsuccessful reelection bid in 2012. French election laws mandate that candidates can only spend a certain amount on their campaigns. Prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy was involved in a scheme to circumvent those rules and spend additional amounts of money. He was one of more than one dozen defendants.

The court announced a one-year prison sentence, which it said could be served at his home with electronic monitoring.

Thursday’s ruling followed years of parallel investigations against Sarkozy, who was the French president from 2007 to 2012 and has portrayed the judicial scrutiny of his actions as politically motivated.

In March, he was handed a three-year prison sentence â€" of which two years were suspended â€" after he was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling. The charges were centered on whether he was behind a deal with a magistrate to illegally receive information on an inquiry linked to him, using false names and unofficial phone lines. Sarkozy appealed the sentence handed to him in March, delaying it from taking effect.

Given that short prison sentences in France can typically be waived, it remains unclear whether Sarkozy will have to spend any time in prison even if the appeal were to fail.

Sarkozy continues to face separate accusations that he received illegal payments from the regime of then-Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi ahead of the 2007 election.

Sarkozy attempted to run in the 2017 presidential election, but he did not succeed, partially because of his mounting legal woes. He subsequently suggested that his career in politics had come to an end. But Sarkozy has maintained high approval ratings among French conservatives.

Sarkozy is the second former French president in a decade to be sentenced. Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy’s predecessor and initial patron, was given a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for handing nonexistent jobs to political allies during his time as Paris mayor.

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