France's ex-president Sarkozy convicted in Libya trial

PARIS: A Paris court on Thursday convicted former French president Nicolas Sarkozy on charges of criminal conspiracy but acquitted him of corruption and accepting illegal campaign financing in his trial into accusations late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi helped fund his victorious 2007 presidential run.

The trial is the latest in a string of legal troubles for the right-wing ex-leader, 70, who denies the charges.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France’s highest honour.

Judge Nathalie Gavarino said Sarkozy,as a serving minister and party leader at the time, had “allowed his close collaborators and political supporters over whom he had authority and who acted in his name”, to approach the Libyan authorities “in order to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support”.

The court’s ruling however did not follow the conclusion of prosecutors that Sarkozy was the alleged beneficiary of the illegal campaign financing. He was acquitted on a separate charges of embezzlement of Libyan public funds, passive corruption and illegal financing of an electoral campaign.

Sentencing is due to be announced later in the hearing, with prosecutors requesting a seven-year prison term for Sarkozy.

He was present in court for the verdict, accompanied by his model and musician wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Two former close aides were also convicted. His former right-hand man Claude Gueant was found guilty of passive corruption and falsification while former minister Brice Hortefeux was found guilty of criminal conspiracy.

Eric Woerth, Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign treasurer, was acquitted.

In a dramatic coincidence, the judgement was issued by the Paris court two days after the death on Tuesday in Beirut of Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key accuser of Sarkozy in the case.

Takieddine, 75, had claimed several times that he helped deliver up to five million euros ($6 million) in cash from Kadhafi to Sarkozy and the former president’s chief of staff in 2006 and 2007.

He then spectacularly retracted his claims before contradicting his own retraction, prompting the opening of another case against Sarkozy and also Bruni-Sarkozy, on suspicion of pressuring a witness.

‘Fight to the end’

Prosecutors argued that Sarkozy and his aides devised a pact with Kadhafi in 2005 to illegally fund Sarkozy’s victorious presidential election bid two years later.

Investigators believe that in return Kadhafi was promised help to restore his international image after Tripoli was blamed by the West for bombing a plane in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.

Kadhafi was ultimately overthrown and killed by opponents in 2011 during the Arab Spring as NATO military intervention — in which France under Sarkozy played a key role — enforced a no-fly zone.

The prosecution’s case is based on statements from seven former Libyan dignitaries, trips to Libya by Gueant and Hortefeux, financial transfers, and the notebooks of the former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem, who was found drowned in the Danube river in Vienna in 2012.

Sarkozy has faced a litany of legal problems since his mandate and has been charged separately with corruption, bribery, influence-peddling and campaign finance infringements.

He was first convicted for graft and sentenced to a one-year jail term, which he served with an electronic tag for three months before being granted conditional release.

Separately, he received a one-year jail term — six months with another six months suspended — in the so-called “Bygmalion affair” for illegal campaign financing. Sarkozy has gone to France’s top appeals court to appeal that verdict.

He has faced repercussions beyond the courtroom, including losing his Legion of Honour — France’s highest distinction — following the graft conviction.

Legal woes aside, the man who styled himself as the “hyper-president” while in office still enjoys considerable influence and popularity on the right of French politics, and is known to regularly meet with President Emmanuel Macron.