Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy jailed for 5 years in Libya campaign funding case

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was on Thursday sentenced to five years in jail after a court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy in the infamous Libyan campaign financing trial. He was accused of receiving illegal campaign funds from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The 70-year-old was acquitted on Thursday of the other charges that were laid against him, which included receiving stolen goods, embezzlement of public funds and passive corruption, The Independent reported.

The veteran French politician served as the president of the country from 2007 to 2012. Sarkozy had always denied the charges and dismissed the allegations, calling them politically motivated.

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According to The Independent, the guilty verdict by a Paris court came after a three-month trial earlier this year, which also involved 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers. Meanwhile, 75-year-old Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who was one of the co-defendants and a key accuser in the case, passed on Tuesday in Beirut due to cardiac arrest.

The late middleman

Earlier, Takieddine had claimed he helped deliver up to €5 million in cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy in 2006 and 2007. In an interview with French investigative outlet Mediapart in 2016, Takieddine said he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French interior ministry under Sarkozy.

However, he later retracted his statement, and eventually retracted his retraction, which ultimately led to a separate investigation into possible witness tampering. Both Sarkozy and his wife, model and musician Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were handed preliminary charges of pressuring a witness. This particular case is still pending trial.

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Ahead of the Thursday judgement, investigators claimed Sarkozy had forged a corrupt pact with the Libyan government in a murky affair that involved Libyan spies, a convicted terrorist and arms dealers. The accusations traced back to 2011 when Gaddafi revealed that the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. The Libyan leader was toppled and killed during the Arab Spring in 2011, ending his four-decade rule over the country.

Sarkozy has been facing scrutiny ever since he left the office. In February last year, he was ordered to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former French president after he was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling. The tag was eventually removed after three months.

In a separate case, the former French president was convicted last year over his alleged involvement in illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid. At that time, he was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount and was sentenced to a year in prison, of which six months were suspended. Sarkozy has denied the allegations and has appealed the ruling.