Former France President Sentenced, Sent To Prison for Corruption.
The French former president, Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced on Monday in Paris to three years’ imprisonment, alongside a firm for corruption and influence-peddling in the so-called “eavesdropping” case, born in 2014 of telephone interceptions with its historical lawyer Thierry Herzog.
Nicolas Sarkozy thus becomes the second former president convicted under the Fifth Republic, after Jacques Chirac in 2011 in the case of fictitious jobs in the city of Paris.
The criminal court considered that a “corruption pact” had been concluded between the former president, now 66 years old, his lawyer Me Thierry Herzog and the former high magistrate Gilbert Azibert, also sentenced to three years of prison, one of which is closed.
On December 8, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) had demanded against Nicolas Sarkozy four years’ imprisonment, two of which were firm, believing that the presidential image had been “damaged” by this affair with “devastating effects”.
Mr. Sarkozy was accused of having attempted to obtain in 2014, through Mr. Herzog, secret information from Gilbert Azibert, then a senior magistrate, in a procedure concerning the seizure of his diaries on the sidelines of the case Bettencourt.
The said Information had to be delivered by the magistrate, in exchange for a boost for a prestigious position in Monaco.
However, before the court, his lawyers had argued that in the end, Nicolas Sarkozy had not been successful before the Court of Cassation and that Gilbert Azibert had never had a post in Monaco.
According to the law, however, it is not necessary that the consideration has been obtained, nor that the influence is real, to characterize the offences of corruption and influence peddling.
Although, this decision of the court will become final if it is not appealed against.
