https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/09/25/nicolas-sarkozy-conspiracy-french-court/
Iona Cleave 25 September 2025
Nicolas Sarkozy has been jailed for five years for conspiring to finance his 2007 presidential campaign using funds from Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator.
Prosecutors said Sarkozy, 70, who led the country from 2007 to 2012, made a “corruption pact” with the Libyan state for millions of euros in exchange for diplomatic favours to help Gaddafi combat his pariah reputation in the West.
Finding him guilty of criminal conspiracy, the court in Paris sentenced him to five years in prison on Thursday, making him the first former French president in history to be jailed.
He was also ordered to pay a €100,000 (£87,000) fine and banned from holding public office.
In her ruling, Nathalie Gavarino, the judge, said Sarkozy had allowed his top aides, who “acted in his name”, to “obtain or try to obtain” the illegal funding from Libya.
The offences were of “exceptional gravity” and “likely to undermine the confidence of citizens,” she added.
Speaking outside of the court, Sarkozy vowed to appeal the verdict, saying: “This injustice is a scandal.”
“If they absolutely want me to sleep in jail, I will sleep in jail, but with my head held high,” he told reporters.
The ruling will force Sarkozy to report to prison even during his appeal. The court ordered that Sarkozy be placed in custody at a later date, with prosecutors given one month to inform him of the date.
Sarkozy was acquitted of all other charges, including corruption and illegal campaign financing, with the court saying there was not enough evidence that he received illegal campaign financing, or that Libyan funds were used in his 2007 campaign.
However, never before in modern France has a former head of state been convicted in connection with receiving illicit foreign financing at this scale. The ruling has delivered a severe blow to the legacy of the conservative politician, who still holds some influence.
It is also the first time since the Second World War that a former president has been guilty of criminal conspiracy with a foreign government and the first time one has been sentenced to jail time.
The last French head of state believed to have been jailed was Louis XVI, who was beheaded in 1792.
Another defendant in the trial, Alexandre Djouhri, who is accused of acting as the scheme’s intermediary was sentenced to six years and placed under immediate arrest.
Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s right-hand-man, and Brice Hortefeux, the former minister, were ordered to serve six and two years respectively. Hortefeux, 67, will be able to serve his term with an electronic tag, while Gueant, 80, will not go to prison because of the state of his health.
He had been charged with “concealing the embezzlement of public funds, passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime”.
Throughout the three-month trial earlier this year, Sarkozy had repeatedly denied all the charges and claimed the case was politically motivated.
At issue was a murky affair alleged to involve Libyan spies, a convicted terrorist, arms dealers and allegations that Gaddafi – who was ousted and killed in an uprising in 2011 – shipped suitcases full of cash to Paris.
Prosecutors had accused Sarkozy of signing a “Faustian pact of corruption with one of the most unsavoury dictators of the last 30 years”.
However, no evidence of a deal struck directly between Sarkozy and Gaddafi was presented during the trial.
The accusations traced their roots to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gaddafi himself said the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.
In 2012, the French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a 50 million-euro funding agreement. Sarkozy denounced the document as a forgery and sued for defamation.
French magistrates later said the memo appeared to be authentic, though no conclusive evidence of a completed transaction was presented at the trial.
Investigators also looked into a series of trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy when he served as interior minister from 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff.
Sarkozy himself visited Libya shortly after being elected and welcomed Gaddafi to the Elysee Palace in a hugely criticised state visit.
In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French interior ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted his statement.
That reversal is now the focus of a separate investigation into possible witness tampering.
The former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, repeatedly denied any guilt, claiming the case was politically motivated Credit: Stephanie Lecocq
Both Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were handed preliminary charges for involvement in alleged efforts to pressure Takieddine. That case has not gone to trial yet.
Takieddine, who was one of the co-defendants, died on Tuesday in Beirut, his lawyer Elise Arfi said. He was 75. He had fled to Lebanon in 2020 and did not attend the trial.
The trial shed light on France’s back-channel talks with Libya in the 2000s, when Gaddafi was seeking to restore diplomatic ties with the West. Before that, Libya was considered a pariah state.
Sarkozy dismissed the allegations as politically motivated and reliant on forged evidence. During the trial, he denounced a “plot” he said was staged by “liars and crooks” including the “Gaddafi clan”.
He suggested the allegations of campaign financing were retaliation for his call – as France’s president – for Gaddafi’s removal.
Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world.
“What credibility can be given to such statements marked by the seal of vengeance?” Sarkozy asked in comments during the trial.
Despite lingering legal headaches and having his Legion of Honour, France’s highest distinction, stripped in June, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the French political stage.
He recently met with his former protege Sebastien Lecornu, the French prime minister, and has also lent credibility to the National Rally (RN), led by Marine Le Pen, saying the hard-Right, anti-immigrant party now forms part of the “republican arc”.
Sarkozy has faced legal battles since leaving office.
Last year, France’s highest court upheld his conviction for corruption and influence peddling, ordering him to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former French head of state. The tag has now been removed.
Also last year, an appeals court confirmed a separate conviction for illegal campaign financing over his failed re-election bid in 2012.