Arthur Greene
The former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been sentenced to a year in prison for illegally funding his 2012 presidential re-election campaign – which he ended up losing.
A French court found the former president guilty of spending hundreds of millions of rand more than he was permitted to on the campaign.
Sarkozy will not see the inside of a jail cell, however, as he has been permitted to carry out the sentence at his home wearing an electronic bracelet.
Sarkozy was one of 14 people accused of campaign fraud in a case which French media have called the “Bygmalion scandal”.
Sarkozy’s UMP party has been found guilty of splashing almost twice the €22.5 million (R393 million) spending cap on his campaign before trying to hide the cost by hiring a PR company called Bygmalion to bill the party, and not the campaign.
Sarkozy denies any wrongdoing and is expected to appeal against the ruling.
After losing the campaign, Sarkozy became swamped by criminal investigations. And the 66-year-old has now been sentenced to three separate jail terms this year.
Earlier this year, he was handed a prison sentence – again of one year – for corruption and influence peddling. He was the country’s first ever president to receive a custodial sentence, but remains free pending an appeal.
His second conviction of the year came in March, after being found guilty of trying to bribe a judge in 2014. He suggested to the judge that he could secure him a prestigious job in return for information about a case.
Image source: @nytimes
