Sarkozy, electronic bracelet sentenced to one year

Final conviction. The Court of Cassation in Paris has rejected the appeal of former President Nicolas Sarkozy. The sentence of three years' imprisonment, of which one without parole, to be served with an electronic bracelet, thus becomes final (but the Gaullist leader turns 70 next month and will be able to avoid this type of sanction as well). There is also three years of active and passive ineligibility. This is the first time a former French president has been sentenced to a non-suspended prison term.

Sarkozy was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling in the Bismuth case. Sarkozy, together with his long-standing lawyer Thierry Herzog, made a corrupt pact with a high judge of the Court of Cassation, Gilbert Azibert, to obtain information and attempt to influence an appeal lodged by the former president in the Bettencourt affaire, concerning some alleged illicit financing of the 2007 presidential campaign (for which a non-prosecution was declared). In return, Azibert was allegedly promised help in obtaining an honorary role in the principality of Monaco. Sarkozy, Herzog and Azibert were all sentenced to the same penalty.

The former president 'will evidently comply with the sanction pronounced', explained his lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, but 'in the coming days' he will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights 'to obtain a guarantee of the rights that the French judges have denied him'. According to Spinosi, interceptions of telephone conversations between Sarkozy and his lawyer were used during the trial, which would be covered, as a 2016 ruling by the ECHR confirmed, by professional secrecy. Azibert, Spinosi also continues, would not have been promoted.

"I am not willing to accept the profound injustice being done to me," the former head of state wrote on X, convinced that he "remains in the right" and stating that he wanted to "reaffirm [his] perfect innocence". "I will take responsibility and face all the consequences," he added. "I am reproached for having thought of supporting a candidacy that was never presented, by means of an intervention that never took place, in exchange for a favour that was neither requested nor granted!", Sarkozy further explained. 'All this,' he concludes, 'based on fragments of conversations between a lawyer and his client, confidential by definition'.

Sarkozy's judicial vicissitudes are not over. On 6 January, the four-month trial on suspected illegal Libyan financing for the 2007 election campaign will open in the Paris court, while later this year the Court of Cassation will have to rule on the former president's appeal against his one-year prison sentence, including six months on probation, in the Bygmalion case, relating to the excessive expenses of his 2012 election campaign.