Sarkozy verdict day: ex-president faces seven-year sentence over Libyan financing

Paris — Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at a Paris court Thursday as prosecutors prepared to deliver a verdict on allegations that his 2007 presidential campaign was illegally financed with funds from the government of then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year prison sentence if he is found guilty.

Accompanied by his wife, the singer and model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Sarkozy sat in the front row of the defendant's seats as reporters and members of the public filled the courtroom. His three adult sons were among the attendees.

If convicted, Sarkozy would be the first former French president found guilty of accepting illegal foreign funds to win office. He has repeatedly denied the charges, calling them politically motivated and disputing the authenticity of papers used in the case.

The three-month trial earlier this year involved 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers.

Prosecutors contend Sarkozy knowingly benefited from what they described as a 'corruption pact' with Gadhafi's government. The case traces back to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gadhafi himself acknowledged that Libyan funds supported Sarkozy's 2007 campaign. In 2012, Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a 50-million-euro funding agreement. Sarkozy has dismissed the document as a forgery and sued for defamation.

Investigators also examined a series of trips to Libya by people close to Sarkozy during his time as interior minister from 2005 to 2007, including his chief of staff.

In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart that he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted the claim. That reversal is now the focus of a separate inquiry into possible witness tampering.

Takieddine, one of Sarkozy's co-defendants, died Tuesday in Beirut at age 75. He had fled to Lebanon in 2020 and did not attend the trial.

Sarkozy has faced other legal troubles. In 2014 he was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling for attempting to obtain information about a legal case; he was sentenced to one year in prison, with six months suspended, and wore an electronic monitoring bracelet for one year before receiving a conditional release due to age.

In 2012 he was convicted of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 reelection bid and was sentenced to a year in prison, with six months suspended. He appealed to France's Court of Cassation.

In June, Sarkozy was stripped of the Legion of Honor after his conviction in a separate case.

A guilty verdict would be subject to appeal, which would suspend the sentence pending resolution.

The case sits at the intersection of France's ties to North Africa in the 2000s and Sarkozy's political legacy, including his role in pushing for Western intervention in Libya in 2011.