Sarkozy found guilty of illegally financing his Elysée campaign

BarcelonaAlready sentenced twice to prison terms for corruption and illicit campaign financing in 2012, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty for the third time in a French court on Thursday. This time, for having received funds from Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime for his 2007 Elysee campaign. While the court is expected to finalize the sentence in the coming minutes, Sarkozy faced up to seven years in prison in this case. The sentence, in any case, can still be appealed.

During a three-month trial, from January to April, the prosecution presented a "set of clues" based on witnesses from former Libyan officials, intercepted notes, and the confession of an obscure Franco-Lebanese mediator who prompted the opening of the case. This key intermediary in the prosecution, Ziad Takieddine, died in Beirut just two days ago. Takieddine was one of the accused, in his case tried in absentia because he refused to appear.

In the trial, The Prosecutor's Office demanded seven years in prison for Sarkozy and a fine of 300,000 euros, in addition to slightly lower sums for two of his former ministers and other intermediaries. The former president denies the facts and made a point during the trial to emphasize that no trace has been found of the money allegedly paid by Tripoli for his campaign. An argument that did not seem to convince the president of the court, who warned that in corruption cases direct evidence is rarely found, but that the accumulation of clues can also lead to conviction.

At 70 years old, Sarkozy, who between February and May of this year had to carry an electronic bracelet to guarantee the house arrest to which he was finally sentenced Last December, for another previous sentence, he has still not finished facing justice since his defeat to the Socialist François Hollande in 2012.

Seven years in prison

But the sentence now hanging over his head is of a higher order, both because of the gravity of the charges against him and because of the consequences of having received money from a regime like Gaddafi's, which he later helped overthrow with a direct military intervention in 2011.

Apart from that, his high popularity could be damaged by a new judicial setback, in addition to the consequences of knowing that his conquest of the Élysée Palace was achieved with funds from a foreign power of dubious reputation.

For months, the prosecution developed the story of collusion between Sarkozy and the Libyan regime, which supposedly ended with a "corruption pact" signed at a meeting with Gaddafi in Tripoli in 2005, when Sarkozy was Interior Minister. From there, the investigation and some media outlets uncovered a series of clues, including money transfers that gradually left a trail, with witnesses from former Libyan regime officials gathered after its fall in 2011.

There were also meetings between two close collaborators of Sarkozy before he entrusted him with the Interior portfolio, and Brice Hortefeux, his best friend, who also held that same ministerial portfolio, with shady figures in the regime. One of them is Gaddafi's brother-in-law, Abdallah al-Senousi, an influential figure in the regime, who was serving a life sentence in France for the 1989 plane bombing that killed 170 people, 54 of them French. Among other clues, the prosecution maintains that this proves the existence of the pact, fueled by the diaries found by banker Wahib Nacer, where he recorded the payments and which allowed investigators to follow his trail.

For the defense, this is a "hypothetical story" fabricated without evidence and which does not prove the existence of illegal financing. Sarkozy forcefully maintains his innocence, as he did in previous trials. In March 2021, he was sentenced to one year in prison for influence peddling and corruption, a sentence upheld two years later on appeal and by the Supreme Court last December, which required him to wear an electronic bracelet. In September 2021, he was sentenced to one year in prison for illegal financing of his 2012 campaign, a sentence that was halved on appeal, and on which the Supreme Court will rule next month. He is also accused of trying to silence the Takieddine witness, a case in which his wife, Carla Bruni, has also been implicated.