WORLD UPDATE

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy jailed for five years

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been jailed for five years over a ‘criminal conspiracy’ plot involving some $50million in laundered cash from Colonel Gaddafi.

Judges sitting at the Paris Correctional Court ruled that the cash from the late Libyan dictator helped Sarkozy, now 70, with his electioneering.

It followed a three-month trial that ended in April, and which also involved 11 other defendants, including three of Sarkozy’s former ministers.

Sarkozy was acquitted of ‘receiving stolen public funds’ and ‘passive corruption’.

But he has been handed the maximum sentence possible for conspiring with former ministers including ex-chief of staff, Claude Guéant, now 80, who was found guilty of ‘passive bribery, forgery, and influence peddling.’

Any appeal by Sarkozy will not alter his forthcoming prison sentence, said the Judge.

He will instead be given up to a month to prepare for life in a cell, so was free to go home today.

He will also have to pay a fine of €100,000 (£87,000), while the date for the start of his jail term is being set.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy jailed for five years over criminal conspiracy plot

Guéant was sentenced to six years in prison, but the court took into account the 80-year-old’s ill health, which was ‘incompatible with incarceration.’

Guéant was also fined Euro 250,000, while Brice Hortefeux, another former Sarkozy minister, was sentenced to two years wearing an electronic bracelet.

The historic judgment against a former President of France follows Judge Nathalie Gavarino saying Sarkozy’s crimes were ‘exceptionally serious’.

She ruled that Sarkozy was guilty of having ‘allowed his close associates to act with a view to obtaining financial support from the Libyan regime’.

It is the first time that a former French head of state has been found guilty of trying to use foreign money in such a manner.

Brice Hortefeux, 67 and another senior Sarkozy minister, were also found guilty of ‘criminal conspiracy’.

The PNF alleged that Sarkozy first requested financing during a visit to Libya when he was France’s Interior Minister in 2005.

Within a few months of his election in 2007, Sarkozy invited Gaddafi to Paris for a state visit and praised him as a great friend and ‘Brother Leader’.

This was while Libya was still being viewed as a pariah state because of the Lockerbie bombing.

The assassination of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside Libya’s London Embassy in 1984 was also still causing outrage, especially as no-one was ever brought to justice for it.

Gaffafi’s head of military security and brother-in-law, Abdallah Senoussi, had also been found guilty in absentia of an attack of a French DC-10 plane which left 170 dead.

It was in 2011 that RAF and French Air Force jets led the mass bombing campaign that ended with Gaddafi being hacked to death by a mob.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy jailed for five years over criminal conspiracy plot

David Cameron was British Prime Minister at the time, and visited Libya with Sarkozy.

There have been claims that Sarkozy wanted his old ally Gaddafi dead because of his potential to produce incriminating evidence.

Sarkozy has already become France’s first ex-president to be tried for alleged crimes carried out in office.

Sarkozy’s conservative predecessor as President of France, the late Jacques Chirac, received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption, but this related to his time as Mayor of Paris.

The last French head of state to go to a prison cell was Marshall Philippe Pétain, the wartime Nazi collaborator.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button