The French Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed the six-month prison sentence, possibly served under house arrest, against former President Nicolas Sarkozy for the irregular financing of his 2012 election campaign.
This is the second definitive conviction against the tenant of the Elysée between 2007 and 2012, who has already served a sentence in a case of corruption and influence peddling, for which he was definitively convicted by the Supreme Court last December.
Sarkozy, 70, had appealed against this conviction, from 2024, for illegal campaign financing for his failed re-election in 2012, in which he was sentenced to a year in prison.
French justice released Sarkozy after three weeks of imprisonment on November 10, after the Attorney General requested his release under judicial supervision. He is the first French head of state to have been in prison.
“It is difficult, very difficult. It certainly is for any prisoner. I would even say that it is exhausting”, declared the former president in a hearing in which he participated via videoconference from prison.
The former conservative president had already been sentenced to five years in prison for illicit association in the case of illegal financing of his presidential campaign in 2007 by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime.
After the latest conviction, Sarkozy denounced a serious blow to the rule of law. The former president believes he is innocent and has received the support of the political class.
