Former French President, Sarkozy convicted of illegal campaign financing
A Paris court has found Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s former president, guilty of illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid.
Thursday’s ruling came six months after the 66-year-old was handed a one-year prison sentence for corruption in a separate trial.
Sarkozy was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount of 22.5 million euros ($26m) on a re-election bid that he lost to the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande.
Some of the outlay was used to fund extravagant campaign rallies and then hire public relations agency Bygmalion to mask the real cost of the events.
Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said the court’s judge had concluded it was “clear that Sarkozy must have known that his campaign team were spending over the legal limit”.
Prosecutors have requested he be handed a six-month prison term, as well as a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of 3,750 euros ($4,354).
Sarkozy, France’s president from 2007 to 2012, will find out his sentence when the court’s judge finishes reading her verdict later on Thursday.
He has vigorously denied wrongdoing and can appeal the decision, meaning he is unlikely to go to jail immediately in any case.
Thirteen other people, including Sarkozy’s former campaign manager, several Bygmalion executives and a handful of former directors of Sarkozy’s The Republicans party were also tried in the case.
The court will deliver their verdicts on Thursday too.
The developments come after Sarkozy was found guilty on March 1 of corruption and influence peddling in another case. He was sentenced to one year in prison and a two-year suspended sentence in that case but is free pending appeal.
The ruling meant Sarkozy became the second former president in modern France, after Jacques Chirac, to be convicted of corruption.
Al Jazeera
