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Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - File picture of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy leaving his house on the day of his incarceration at the Sante prison to begin his five-year prison sentence for criminal conspiracy over attempts to raise campaign funds from Libya, in Paris, France, October 21, 2025. — Reuters pic
PARIS, Nov 27 — France’s highest court ruled against former president Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday over illegal financing of his 2012 re-election bid, adding a second definitive conviction to his rap sheet.
The ruling comes after Sarkozy, a one-term president from 2007 to 2012, was sent to jail last month in a separate case, related to alleged Libyan funding in his earlier election campaign.
The 70-year-old’s 20 days in jail made him the first post-war French leader to serve time behind bars, before his release earlier this month pending an appeals trial.
The Court of Cassation on Wednesday said Sarkozy was “definitively convicted” in the 2012 campaign financing case, upholding the ruling of an appeals court last year that sentenced him to a six-month term with an electronic tag.
Prosecutors argued Sarkozy’s right-wing party worked with a public relations firm, Bygmalion, to hide the true cost of his 2012 electoral campaign.
They said he spent nearly €43 million (RM206 million) on his 2012 campaign, nearly double the permitted amount of €22.5 million.
Unlike his co-defendants, he was not implicated in the double-billing system allegedly used to cover costs but was held accountable as the beneficiary of illegal campaign financing.
Sarkozy has denied “any criminal responsibility”, denouncing the allegations as “lies”.
But his lawyers Patrice Spinosi and Emmanuel Piwnica in a joint statement told AFP that he had taken note of the Court of Cassation’s decision.
Upcoming trial in Libyan case
The former president has faced a series of legal challenges since leaving office.
In December last year, he exhausted his last legal recourse in another case over trying to extract favours from a judge.
He served that sentence with an electronic ankle tag, which was removed in May after several months.
Then he was jailed after a lower court found him guilty of allowing aides to seek to collect money from Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi for his 2007 presidential run.
Despite his legal problems, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the right.
He was received by President Emmanuel Macron before entering prison, and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, a former protege, sparked criticism by meeting Sarkozy inside Paris’s La Sante jail.
A court later barred Sarkozy from seeing the minister and other officials as part of restrictions tied to his release from prison until the appeals trial in the so-called Libyan case in March next year.
A fortnight after his release, the ex-leader announced he would publish a book next month about his experience of serving three weeks in jail. — AFP
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