Nicolas Sarkozy, Former French president has been sentenced to five years in prison after a Paris court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy in a long-running case tied to millions of euros allegedly channelled from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to bankroll his 2007 election campaign.
The 70-year-old, who led France between 2007 and 2012, was acquitted of other charges, including illegal campaign financing and passive corruption. But the verdict means Sarkozy will serve jail time even if he appeals – a first for a former French head of state.
As Judge Nathalie Gavarino read out the sentence on Thursday, there was an audible gasp in the courtroom. Sarkozy was also ordered to pay a €100,000 (£87,000) fine.\
“This is extremely serious for the rule of law,” Sarkozy told reporters afterwards, insisting he was the victim of a politically motivated prosecution. “If they absolutely want me to sleep in jail, I will sleep in jail, but with my head held high.”
The case dates back to 2011, when reports surfaced that Gaddafi’s regime had funnelled tens of millions of euros into Sarkozy’s presidential campaign four years earlier. A Libyan news agency and Gaddafi himself claimed money was secretly channelled to Paris. The following year, French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a €50 million funding deal – a document Sarkozy dismissed as a forgery.
Over time, prosecutors pieced together testimony from former Libyan officials, records of trips to Tripoli by Sarkozy allies Claude Gueant and Brice Hortefeux, financial transfers, and the personal notebooks of Libya’s former oil minister Shukri Ghanem, who was found drowned in Vienna’s Danube river in 2012.
They argued that Sarkozy struck a “corruption pact” with Gaddafi, offering diplomatic rehabilitation to a regime long treated as an international pariah in exchange for cash to fuel his campaign.
The court ruled Sarkozy had allowed his inner circle to seek Libyan funding, though it stopped short of concluding he personally pocketed the money. Gueant and Hortefeux – both former interior ministers – were convicted of criminal association, while Sarkozy’s campaign treasurer, Eric Woerth, was acquitted.
Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, faces separate charges of hiding evidence in connection with the case, which she denies.
This is not the first time Sarkozy has been in the dock. In 2021, he was convicted of trying to bribe a judge in a separate case and sentenced to three years, with the right to serve it at home under electronic surveillance.
The latest verdict, however, marks a humiliating new low for the man once dubbed the “hyper-president”. If upheld on appeal, it will make Sarkozy the first French ex-president to actually serve time behind bars.
The case also reopens uncomfortable questions about France’s 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya – championed by Sarkozy – which helped bring down Gaddafi.
For now, Sarkozy maintains he is innocent and promises to fight on. But after years of courtroom battles, his political career, which ended with his retirement in 2017, looks increasingly defined not by policy or leadership, but by scandal.
