Nicolas Sarkozy again in court docket with the attraction trial of the Libyan financing case | EUROtoday

The stakes couldn’t be increased for Nicolas Sarkozy, who final 12 months grew to become the primary ex-president to be incarcerated within the historical past of the Republic. Monday March 16 opens, within the monumental setting of the Paris Court of Appeal, the trial of France’s most well-known defendant within the Libyan financing affair, scheduled to final till June 3.

In September 2025, the Paris felony court docket discovered him responsible of felony conspiracy and sentenced him to 5 years in jail as a result of “corruption at the highest level” of “exceptional seriousness”. Entered the Health jail on October 21 beneath the cameras of the entire world, Nicolas Sarkozy obtained his launch beneath judicial supervision three weeks later.

In this multi-meandering political-financial cleaning soap opera, which has raged since 2011, the previous champion of the fitting is accused of getting acquired secret funds from dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya for his victorious 2007 presidential marketing campaign, which he has all the time vigorously denied.

At first occasion, the felony court docket acquitted him for 3 of the 4 offenses for which he was being tried.

The judges thought of that the Libyan financing of the 2007 electoral marketing campaign was not established, regardless of the corroborated sending of 6.5 million euros by Libya in January and November 2006. For the magistrates, no proof was offered that these funds really landed within the coffers of the marketing campaign which introduced Nicolas Sarkozy to the Élysée.

However, they judged that the ex-president had really allowed his closest collaborators, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, to strategy the Libyan authorities on this course throughout secret conferences they’d in Libya on the finish of 2005 with an in depth good friend of Muammar Gaddafi, wished by the French justice system.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s entourage didn’t want to communicate earlier than the listening to.

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Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux among the many defendants

In addition to Nicolas Sarkozy, now aged 71, definitively convicted within the Bismuth and Bygmalion instances, respectively for corruption and unlawful marketing campaign financing, 9 different defendants shall be retried throughout this attraction trial.

“The hidden financing of electoral campaigns – which is based on a complex set of actors, financial transactions and legal arrangements – weakens the democratic pact. Each euro embezzled or illegally injected is a direct attack on sovereignty,” mentioned the anti-corruption associations Sherpa, Anticor and Transparency International France, civil events, in a press launch.

Alongside the previous head of state, his former right-hand man Claude Guéant and former minister Brice Hortefeux, his lifelong good friend, should seem.

Secretary normal of the Élysée beneath the Sarkozy presidency, Claude Guéant was some of the closely sanctioned at first occasion. The court docket sentenced him to 6 years in jail for a complete collection of crimes, together with corruption, passive affect peddling and forgery and use of solid paperwork.

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Due to his state of well being, he escaped the arrest warrant and his presence on the attraction trial is unsure.

As for Brice Hortefeux, 67, the courts accuse him of getting acted as a financing middleman by means of the community of the Franco-Lebanese Ziad Takieddine. This central particular person within the case, who had been tried in his absence in court docket, died simply earlier than the judgment.

Brice Hortefeux was sentenced by the felony court docket to 2 years in jail, an adjustable sentence to be served beneath a bracelet at dwelling accompanied by provisional execution, and a superb of fifty,000 euros.

Also on the dock is the previous Minister of Labor and Budget Eric Woerth, who was the treasurer of the 2007 marketing campaign. His acquittal at first occasion was the topic of an attraction by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).

Like Nicolas Sarkozy, the 2 convicts imprisoned following the September judgment, the middleman Alexandre Djouhri and the banker Wahib Nacer, have been launched by the courts within the following weeks.

With AFP