Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of trying to obtain confidential information from a judge by offering to help him land a job. He received a sentence of at least one year, but said he would appeal.
PARIS — The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty and sentenced to prison by a court in Paris on Monday on charges of corruption and influence peddling, only the second time in modern French history that a former president has been convicted of a crime.
The conviction was the culmination of just one of several long-running legal entanglements that are coming to a head for the politician who led France from 2007 to 2012. Mr. Sarkozy, 66, has always denied any wrongdoing and he quickly announced he would appeal.
He still holds considerable sway among French conservatives, but the conviction could undermine his broader standing in French politics and dash any hopes of mounting yet another comeback ahead of the 2022 presidential elections — especially for a politician who has fashioned himself as particularly tough on crime.
Mr. Sarkozy was found guilty of trying to illegally obtain information on another case against him from a judge in return for promises to use his influence to secure a prestigious job for the judge.Jean-François Bohnert, the head of the financial prosecutor’s office — which handled the case against Mr. Sarkozy — noted in a statement that the judges had found his actions “particularly serious, having been committed by a former president of the Republic who was once the guarantor of an independent judiciary.
Jacqueline Laffont, Mr. Sarkozy’s lawyer, told reporters that he would appeal the conviction, calling the ruling “totally baseless and unjustified.”
While the court handed down a three-year prison sentence, two of those years were suspended. If Mr. Sarkozy commits a new crime within a given time frame, a court could then order the full sentence to be served.
Mr. Sarkozy can request that his one-year term be served outside prison, for instance at home with an electronic bracelet. But Mr. Sarkozy’s appeal places the entire sentence on hold. The conviction does not bar Mr. Sarkozy from running for office, although he has not publicly expressed any such desire.
“It’s a hard blow,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political science professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris, noting that despite his legal worries since leaving office, Mr. Sarkozy had cultivated the image of an “irreplaceable” kingmaker who acted behind the scenes on the French right, aided in part by the lack of a clear political successor
SOURCE: nytimes