A former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced by a Paris court to five years in prison.
Naijaonpoint reports that the court in Thursday found him guilty of criminal conspiracy in his trial into accusations the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi helped fund his victorious 2007 presidential run.
The court ordered that Sarkozy should be placed in custody at a later date, with prosecutors given one month to inform the former head of state when he should go to prison. Even if Sarkozy appeals the verdict this measure will remain in force.
According to CNN, the court also found two of Sarkozy’s closest associates when he was president, former ministers Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, guilty of criminal association but likewise acquitted them of some other charges.
The Paris court ruling suggested that the court believed that the men conspired to seek Libyan funding for Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign but that judges weren’t convinced that the conservative leader himself was directly involved in the funding effort or that any Libyan money ended up being used in his winning campaign.
The chief judge, in an hours-long reading of the lengthy verdict, said Sarkozy allowed his close associates to reach out to Libyan authorities “to obtain or try to obtain financial support in Libya for the purpose of securing campaign financing.” He stood as she read out the verdict.
But the court also said it couldn’t determine with certainty that Libyan money ended up financing Sarkozy’s campaign. Still, under French law, a corrupt scheme can still be a crime even if money wasn’t paid or cannot be proven, the court explained.
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