Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of criminal conspiracy linked to illegal campaign financing from Libya during his 2007 election campaign. The ruling was delivered by the Paris Criminal Court on Thursday after a trial that lasted three months.
Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was tried alongside 11 others, including three former ministers and Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine. While the court cleared him of other charges such as passive corruption and direct illegal financing, it held him responsible for conspiring to receive millions of euros from the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to boost his electoral chances.
French investigators first opened inquiries into the matter in 2013, and suspicions grew after Gaddafi’s government collapsed in 2011. Evidence later surfaced suggesting that Sarkozy’s campaign benefitted from cash payments originating from Tripoli. Takieddine, one of the key figures in the case, stated that he personally transported over €5 million in cash-filled suitcases from Libya to Paris between 2006 and 2007.
Despite denying the allegations and calling the case politically driven, Sarkozy now faces prison time. His legal troubles are not new, as he was also convicted in 2021 for corruption and influence peddling in a separate wiretapping scandal, for which he received a three-year sentence.
The latest ruling marks another chapter in the long-running investigation that has followed Sarkozy for more than a decade.