Sarkozy loses final appeal in graft case, will wear electronic tag

France’s highest appeals court on Wednesday, December 18, confirmed a verdict against former president Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption and influence peddling, ordering him to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former head of state.

Sarkozy, who had earlier been found guilty of illegal attempts to secure favors from a judge, will “evidently” respect the terms of the conviction after the Court of Cassation’s verdict, his lawyer Patrice Spinosi said. But he will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights within weeks, Spinosi added.

This move at the Strasbourg-based ECHR will, however, not hold up Wednesday’s verdict from being carried out. The sanction now comes into force, Sarkozy having exhausted all the legal avenues in the case in France.

In 2021, a lower court found that Sarkozy and his former lawyer, Thierry Herzog, had in 2014 formed a “corruption pact” with judge Gilbert Azibert to obtain and share information about another legal investigation involving the former president.

The court sentenced him to a three-year jail term, two of which were suspended and one that was to take the form of home detention with an electronic tag allowing his movements to be monitored. That verdict had already been upheld once, by an appeals court, last year.

Azibert and Herzog received the same sentences as Sarkozy. Herzog was also banned from working as a lawyer for three years. All three men have always claimed they were innocent. Sarkozy’s lawyer said he would “not give up this fight.”

Sarkozy, writing on X, said he was the target of a “profound injustice.” He maintained his “perfect innocence” and said he expected the ECHR to find France at fault in the case, adding that “this could have been avoided if I had benefitted from a level-headed legal analysis.”

Other trials pending

The corruption case that led to Wednesday’s ruling focused on phone conversations that took place in February 2014. At the time, investigative judges had launched an inquiry into the financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. During the inquiry, they discovered that Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog were communicating via secret mobile phones registered to the alias “Paul Bismuth.”

Wiretapped conversations on those phones led prosecutors to suspect Sarkozy and Herzog of promising magistrate Gilbert Azibert a job in Monaco in exchange for leaking information about another legal case involving Sarkozy. Azibert never got the post and legal proceedings against Sarkozy have been dropped in the case he was seeking information about. Prosecutors had concluded, however, that the proposal still constitutes corruption under French law, even if the promise wasn’t fulfilled.

The so-called Bismuth case comes on top of separate cases about campaign financing overspending, and the alleged financing by Libya of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign.

Sarkozy, 69, was sentenced to six months in prison and a six months suspended sentence on appeal in the so-called Bygmalion case. Sarkozy’s team was accused of spending nearly double the legal limit on his lavish 2012 re-election campaign, using false billing from a public relations firm called Bygmalion. He has denied any wrongdoing and appealed again, to the highest court.

A new trial was ordered in a different case, over alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 election campaign. France’s financial crimes prosecutors said Sarkozy and 12 others should face trial over accusations they sought millions of euros in financing from the regime of then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for his ultimately victorious campaign. Sarkozy is accused of corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealing the embezzlement of public funds but has always rejected all the charges.