Nicolas Sarkozy is finally fixed on his fate. The Paris Criminal Court found him guilty of illegal financing of his 2012 campaign in the Bygmalion case and sentenced him to one year in prison. A heavier sentence than the requisitions formulated by the prosecution after five weeks of hearing in May and June: one year in prison, including six months suspended. The latter was not present in court to hear the judgment, but his lawyer Thierry Herzog announced that he was going to appeal this decision.
This penalty can be arranged at home under an electronic bracelet. It comes on top of a previous conviction, handed down last March: three years in prison, one of which is closed, for corruption and influence peddling, in the so-called “wiretapping” affair. He thus became the first former president of the Fifth Republic to be sentenced to prison. In this case, the former tenant of the Elysee Palace appealed.
The former head of state, absent from the hearing, “continued to organize meetings,” said Caroline Viguier, president of the tribunal. “He had been warned in writing of the risk of exceeding” the legal ceiling, she further underlined when reading the judgment. “It was not his first campaign, he had experience as a candidate,” continued the magistrate. Nicolas Sarkozy “voluntarily omitted to exercise control over the expenses incurred”.
13 co-graduates
Alongside Nicolas Sarkozy, thirteen people (former executives of the campaign and of the UMP – now LR – as well as of the Bygmalion company, which organized the meetings) were prosecuted for fraud or complicity, and complicity in the illegal financing of the presidential campaign of the former head of state. Unlike them, Nicolas Sarkozy was not blamed for the double billing system imagined to hide the explosion in authorized campaign expenses.
All found guilty of complicity, they were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to three and a half years, some with a suspended sentence. All firm sentences will be adjusted. Jérôme Lavrilleux, at the time deputy director of the campaign and the only one in the UMP to have recognized the fraud put in place to hide excessive spending, was sentenced to three years in prison, including one year suspended.