Top court upholds former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's second conviction

On Wednesday (Nov 26), France's highest court ruled against former president Nicolas Sarkozy for illegal financing of his re-election bid in 2012. The ruling comes after Sarkozy was sentenced to jail on October 21 in a different case for his association to alleged Libyan funding in his earlier election campaign. 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.

The 70-year-old's 20 days in jail made him the first post-war French leader to serve time behind bars, before his release earlier this month pending an appeals trial. The Court of Cassation on Wednesday said Sarkozy was "definitively convicted" in the 2012 campaign financing case, upholding the ruling of an appeals court last year that sentenced him to a six-month term with an electronic tag. Prosecutors argued Sarkozy's right-wing party worked with a public relations firm, Bygmalion, to hide the true cost of his 2012 electoral campaign.

They said he spent nearly 43 million euros (almost $50 million) on his 2012 campaign, nearly double the permitted amount of 22.5 million euros. Unlike his co-defendants, he was not implicated in the double-billing system allegedly used to cover costs but was held accountable as the beneficiary of illegal campaign financing. Sarkozy has denied "any criminal responsibility", denouncing the allegations as "lies". But his lawyers Patrice Spinosi and Emmanuel Piwnica in a joint statement told AFP that he had taken note of the Court of Cassation's decision.

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.”