Sarkozy Sentenced to 5 Years at Libyan Cash Campaign Trial
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted by Paris judges and handed a five-year jail term for criminal conspiracy at a trial over allegations his 2007 winning campaign was covertly funded by millions of euros from the late Moammar Qaddafi’s regime.
The judges decided that any appeal by Sarkozy wouldn’t lift the execution of the sentence. Agence France-Presse said that he is due to be summoned within a month to learn the start of his jail term. The court nevertheless cleared him of more serious charges of embezzlement of Libyan funds, corruption and illegal campaign financing.
Paris judge Nathalie Gavarino said Sarkozy had let people in his entourage reach out to Libyan authorities “in order to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support in Libya” for his 2007 presidential campaign, according to AFP. Some of his aides at the time were also convicted on Thursday.
Sarkozy has consistently denied wrongdoing. Christophe Ingrain, one of his lawyers, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors had requested a seven-year prison term for France’s 2007-2012 leader.
After scaling the heights of French politics to win the presidency in 2007, Sarkozy has battled a variety of accusations since his failed 2012 reelection bid. This latest trial is the third separate criminal case that has brought him to court and comes after the 70-year-old lost a final appeal in December to overturn a historic corruption conviction.
What Is the Libyan Cash Campaign Trial?
The “Libyan cash campaign” affair is the long-running scandal that links former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to covert financing from the regime of Muammar Gaddafi during Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential race. At its heart is an accusation that up to €50 million in Libyan state money was secretly channelled to Sarkozy’s campaign at a time when Gaddafi was seeking to rehabilitate his image in the West and expand political and commercial ties with France.
The story first surfaced through rumours in French political circles and occasional Libyan leaks, but it broke into public view in 2012 when the investigative site Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan memorandum mentioning plans to fund Sarkozy and his close ally Brice Hortefeux. The allegations described cash being moved in suitcases from Tripoli to Paris, often via intermediaries such as the Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who for years said he personally delivered millions in notes to Sarkozy’s camp. Other Libyan insiders, including Gaddafi’s former chief of staff Bashir Saleh and intelligence chief Moussa Koussa, were repeatedly named as facilitators or witnesses to the funding scheme. The accusations were politically explosive because Sarkozy, once in office, welcomed Gaddafi to Paris with great pomp in 2007, only to become one of the leaders who later pushed for NATO’s 2011 intervention against him.
French prosecutors opened a formal inquiry in 2013 to determine whether illegal foreign money had entered Sarkozy’s campaign. Over time they gathered testimony, bank records, Libyan documents, and travel data. Some of the evidence proved fragile or contradictory — Takieddine later retracted and then partially reaffirmed statements; some Libyan notes’ authenticity was disputed; and Shukri Ghanem, a former Libyan oil minister who reportedly kept a diary of payoffs, died mysteriously in 2012 before investigators could question him fully. Yet the probe gradually widened, bringing charges not just of illegal campaign financing but of criminal conspiracy, embezzlement of Libyan public funds, and laundering. Several close Sarkozy allies, including former ministers Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, were also placed under investigation.
