Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy Sentenced To One Year In Prison

FORMER French President Nicolas Sarkozy Sentenced To One Year In Prison For Corruption

Paris judge Judge Christine Mée, today found the 66-year-old former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of ‘corruption and influence peddling’, after a three-week trial in Paris.

Mr Sarkozy was sentenced to three years, with two of them suspended, and the judge told him that he could serve the remaining one-year term at home if he agrees to wear an electronic tag, and already it is believed he will spend those 12 months at his wife Carla Bruni‘s Paris home in Villa Montmorency.

His glamourous 53-year-old multi-millionaire singer, model, and actress wife owns the luxurious £2.5million, 3-bedroomed 19th-century mansion in the capital, in a building previously also home to actor Gérard Depardieu, and Victor Hugo, the writer of Les Miserables.

The former president will also remain a free man while his lawyer conducts an appeal, a process that could take many years with the way the judicial system works in France.

Sarkozy had run the risk of being sentenced to up to a decade in prison, plus a fine approaching the equivalent of £1million, remaining motionless, wearing a dark suit and tie with a white shirt, head bowed, as the verdict was read out.

He stood accused of using the false name of ‘Paul Bismuth’, while trying to glean confidential information from a judge by using a so-called ‘burner’ mobile phone.

Thierry Herzog, his 65-year-old lawyer, and the 73-year-old retired judge, Gilbert Azibert, who was said to have been bribed by Sarkozy, both received the exact same sentence and conditions of wearing an electronic tag.

Marshal Philippe Pétain, the wartime Nazi collaborator, was the last French head of state to go to prison.

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