French prosecutors requested a seven-year jail sentence in opposition to former President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday, in a trial over accusations that his 2007 marketing campaign obtained unlawful financing from the Libyan authorities of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Such a sentence could be unprecedented in trendy French historical past for a former president.
Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative politician who led France from 2007 to 2012, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and judges on the Paris court docket where he has been on trial since January could or could not observe the prosecution’s request if he’s discovered responsible. His attorneys are anticipated to put out their closing arguments subsequent month, and the court docket is anticipated to defer its verdict to a later date.
The severity of the sentence request confirmed that the Libya case is a far more serious threat to Mr. Sarkozy’s legacy than his many different authorized entanglements, a few of which have already resulted in convictions. Along with jail time, prosecutors additionally requested that Mr. Sarkozy, 70, pay a effective of 300,000 euros, or about $340,000; that he be barred from working for workplace, and that he be stripped of sure civic rights.
Mr. Sarkozy, who now not holds public workplace however retains some political influence, lashed out in opposition to the sentencing suggestions on Thursday, saying in a statement on social media that the “falseness and violence of the accusations and the outrageousness of the sentence demanded” aimed to “masks the weak spot” of the prosecution’s case.
The Libya case is sprawling, convoluted and explosive, involving accusations that Mr. Sarkozy’s marketing campaign illegally accepted funding from Mr. el-Qaddafi, the previous Libyan strongman who was killed by opposition fighters in 2011.
Mr. Sarkozy is dealing with expenses of unlawful marketing campaign financing, legal conspiracy, concealing the misappropriation of public funds and passive corruption (a cost that applies to folks suspected of receiving cash or favors).
Over the previous few days, prosecutors who specialise in monetary crimes depicted Mr. Sarkozy as the important thing determination maker in an “unthinkable, unprecedented, obscene corruption pact” with the Qaddafi authorities, involving a posh net of political and monetary ties between Mr. Sarkozy’s advisers, Libyan officers and businessmen or bankers who acted as intermediaries.
Twelve different persons are additionally standing trial on related expenses, and prosecutors have requested sentences starting from one to 6 years in jail and fines of as much as 4 million euros.
Since 1945, just one different former French head of state has been discovered responsible by a court docket of regulation: Jacques Chirac, who was convicted in 2011 of a much less putting type of corruption, misusing public funds when he was mayor of Paris, and was given a suspended sentence.
Mr. Sarkozy has confronted a number of accusations of economic impropriety since he left workplace, though that has performed little to dent his recognition with the bottom of his conservative social gathering or to stop his memoirs from flying off the shelves.
A number of the instances have been dropped. However in 2021, he was convicted of making an attempt to acquire data from a choose a few court docket case in opposition to him and is at present serving one yr below a type of home arrest with an digital bracelet.
He was additionally convicted in 2021 for illegally financing his unsuccessful 2012 re-election marketing campaign, which wildly exceeded France’s spending limits. That case is still going through the appeals process.
