26 August 2023; MEMO: France’s financial crimes prosecutor’s office said on Friday that former President Nicolas Sarkozy will stand trial in 2025 on charges of corruption and receiving illegal campaign funding from Libyan government for his campaign in the 2007 presidential elections that he won.
Sarkozy has always denied these accusations.
He said in a 2018 interview that there isn’t the slightest evidence of the claims.
Sarkozy remains an important figure in French politics, although he no longer holds public office.
The former conservative president, who served from 2007 to 2012, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted in the case. There are also other legal cases against him.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor specialised in financial crimes said that Sarkozy will be tried in this case on charges of “concealment of embezzlement of public funds, passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime punishable by 10 years in jail.”
There are 12 other defendants in the case, including well-known figures such as Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s former right-hand man, Eric Woerth, the campaign’s former treasurer, and Brice Hortefeux, the former interior minister.
The prosecutor’s office added that it had set 7 March, 2024, for the first session to consider the case, with the trial itself taking place between 6 January and 10 April 2025.
Sarkozy, 68, lost an appeal in May against being convicted of corruption and influence peddling in 2021. His legal team has promised to appeal the ruling in France’s highest court.
Sarkozy’s predecessor, the late conservative president Jacques Chirac, was found guilty of corruption in 2011, four years after he left office.
