Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy to be jailed for corruption

A French court on Monday convicted former president Nicolas Sarkozy on charges of corruption and influence peddling, handing him a three-year prison sentence of which two years are suspended. Sarkozy was accused of offering to help a judge obtain a senior job in Monaco in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances. The court said Mr. Sarkozy will be entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet. Mr.Sarkozy will face another trial later this month along with 13 other people on charges of illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign. This is the first time in France’s modern history that a former President has gone on trial for corruption. 

Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was found guilty in 2011 of misuse of public money and given a two-year suspended prison sentence for actions during his time as Paris mayor. Sarkozy’s co-defendants his lawyer and long-time friend Thierry Herzog, 65, and now-retired magistrate Gilbert Azibert, 74 also deny wrongdoing. Prosecutors have requested two years of prison and a two-year suspended sentence for all three defendants over what they said was a “corruption pact.” “No pact has ever existed,” Sarkozy told the court. “Neither in my head, nor in reality.” “I want to be cleared of that infamy,” he added.The trial focussed on phone conversations that took place in February 2014.At the time, investigative judges had launched an inquiry into the financing of the 2007 presidential campaign. During the investigation they incidentally discovered that Sarkozy and Herzog were communicating via secret mobile phones registered to the alias “Paul Bismuth.” Conversations wire-tapped on these phones led prosecutors to suspect Sarkozy and Herzog of promising Azibert a job in Monaco in exchange for leaking information about another legal case, known by the name of France’s richest woman, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.