'Suspected Judge Bribery' Former French President Sarkozy Also Guilty in Second Trial

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (68), who was prosecuted on charges including bribing a judge, was found guilty again in the second trial.

According to AFP and other foreign media on the 17th (local time), the Paris Court of Appeal sentenced former President Sarkozy to three years in prison, including a two-year suspended sentence, the same as in the first trial.

The court also ruled, as in the first trial, that he would be under house arrest with an electronic bracelet for one year and banned from holding public office for three years.

Sarkozy, who served from 2007 to 2012, is accused of promising a job to a sitting Supreme Court judge in exchange for confidential information related to an investigation into his illegal political funding allegations in 2014.

At that time, judicial authorities were investigating circumstances in which former President Sarkozy allegedly received large sums of illegal political funds from Liliane Bettencourt, heiress of the French cosmetics company L'Or?al, ahead of the 2007 presidential election.

On the first day of the appeal trial held in December last year, former President Sarkozy pleaded not guilty, saying, "I have never bribed anyone." After the verdict that day, he left the courtroom without saying anything. His lawyer expressed the intention to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In September 2021, Sarkozy was also sentenced to one year in prison on charges of forging receipts to raise illegal campaign funds while running for re-election in 2012.

Before the 2007 presidential election, he was indicted on charges of receiving slush funds from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

He is the first president to be sentenced to prison since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in France in 1958.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.