&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Ex-France President Nicholas Sarkozy starts jail term for election campaign funding deal with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi - What was it")
Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy arrived at La Sante state prison on Tuesday (Oct 21) to start his five-year prison sentence. He was convicted of illegal funding for his campaign from the now-deceased dictator of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. Sarkozy, who was France's president from 2007 to 2012, has denied the allegations since onset but is now the first French president post-war to go to prison and the first former head of a European Union country to serve prison time. During the trial, the judge found Sarkozy guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted him of three separate charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding.
What was the pact between Sarkozy and Gaddafi?
According to the case details, Sarkozy had struck a pact with Gaddafi to obtain funding from the former Libyan dictator for his election campaign in return for diplomatic, legal, and business favours. The trail came after a 10-year anti-corruption probe. It was first in March 2011 when a Libyan news agency reported about Gaddafi financing Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign.
In 2014, French24 had reported that in a recorded interview with France 3 TV, Gaddafi reportedly said: "Sarkozy is mentally deficient … It’s thanks to me that he became president … We gave him the funds that allowed him to win.”
In the same year, Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam had Euronews: “The first thing we ask of this clown is that he return the money to the Libyan people. We helped him so he could help the Libyan people, but he let us down.”
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What happened to Gaddafi?
The former Libyan dictator was killed by opposition forces with the backing of NATO forces in October 2011, shortly after the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests broke out in the same year. Notably, Sarkozy was the first Western leader to push of military intervention in Libya after the protests broke out. As for his deal with Gaddafi, Sarkozy had said that the campaign funding allegations are motivated by his backing of opposition against the Libyan dictator.
