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It is also the first time since the Second World War that a former president has been guilty of criminal conspiracy with a foreign government and the first time one has been sentenced to jail time.
He had been charged with “concealing the embezzlement of public funds, passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime”.
Throughout the three-month trial earlier this year, Sarkozy had repeatedly denied all the charges and claimed the case was politically motivated.
At issue was a murky affair alleged to involve Libyan spies, a convicted terrorist, arms dealers and allegations that Gaddafi – who was ousted and killed in an uprising in 2011 – shipped suitcases full of cash to Paris.
Prosecutors had accused Sarkozy of signing a “Faustian pact of corruption with one of the most unsavoury dictators of the last 30 years”.
However, no evidence of a deal struck directly between Sarkozy and Gaddafi was presented during the trial.
The accusations traced their roots to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gaddafi himself said the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.
In 2012, the French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a 50 million-euro funding agreement. Sarkozy denounced the document as a forgery and sued for defamation.
French magistrates later said the memo appeared to be authentic, though no conclusive evidence of a completed transaction was presented at the trial.
Investigators also looked into a series of trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy when he served as interior minister from 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff.
Sarkozy himself visited Libya shortly after being elected and welcomed Gaddafi to the Elysee Palace in a hugely criticised state visit.
In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French interior ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted his statement.
That reversal is now the focus of a separate investigation into possible witness tampering.
Both Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were handed preliminary charges for involvement in alleged efforts to pressure Takieddine. That case has not gone to trial yet.
Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world.
Despite lingering legal headaches and having his Legion of Honour, France’s highest distinction, stripped in June, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the French political stage.
Telegraph, London
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