Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is arriving at the Paris Courthouse to hear the final ruling on the 1st (local time). AFP=Yonhap News
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, 66, was sentenced to imprisonment on charges of buying a judge on the 1st (local time). This is the first case among French presidents to be sentenced to imprisonment.
According to AFP, Reuters, and AP, a French court sentenced former President Sarkozy, who was accused of buying a judge, to three years in prison, including two years probation.
Former President Sarkozy became the first president convicted of corruption since 1958, when the Fifth Republic was established in France.
It is unlikely that Sarkozy will be put into prison, according to the French custom of actually being detained if he is imprisoned for more than two years. However, some media reported that there is a possibility that after two years of probation, one year after the probation, instead of going to jail, after attaching an electronic tag, there is a possibility of being detained. Former President Sarkozy has denied the allegations and is expected to appeal.
Former President Sarkozy, who took office from 2007 to 2012, is accused of promising a job after retirement from Monaco in exchange for providing internal secrecy related to his investigation of alleged illegal political funds to the then Supreme Justice Gilber Agiber in 2014.
French judicial authorities were investigating the situation in which former President Sarkozy was handed over a large amount of illegal political money to Lillian Betancourt, the heiress of French cosmetics company L’Oreal, ahead of the 2007 presidential election.
Former President Sarkozy was found not guilty of receiving illegal political funding from Betancourt. Agiber also did not get the position of judge in Monaco.
However, the prosecution saw that there was some kind of consultation between Judge Aziber, while former President Sarkozy communicated with his lawyer Thierry Erzog through his cell phone.
Former President Sarkozy is also under investigation for receiving back money from Libyan dictator Gaddafi ahead of the 2007 presidential election, and for illegally raising presidential funding by forging receipts in the 2012 presidential election.
He tried for re-election in 2012, but was defeated by Socialist candidate Francois Hollande. He challenged himself in the 2017 presidential election, but was eliminated from the Republican primary.
Reporter Han Young-hye [email protected]
