The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed, Wednesday February 14, the guilt of Nicolas Sarkozy in exceeding the legal spending limit during his lost campaign for the 2012 presidential election. The court decided on a sentence of one year in prison including six months suspended against Mr. Sarkozy, who had been sentenced to one year in prison at first instance. The public prosecutor’s office had requested, for this second trial, a one-year suspended prison sentence. The former President of the Republic has always denied having known about or requested a system of false invoices, or having benefited from it.
“The court returned to the quantum [of the sentence] required in first instance,” the President of the Court said when reading the decision. The latter also orders “the principle of adjustment of the firm part of the sentence”, which means that Nicolas Sarkozy will not be incarcerated. The former president left the courtroom without making a statement.
Alongside him, several other defendants were sentenced to two years in prison, 18 months of which were suspended, and five years of ineligibility: Jérôme Lavrilleux, his former deputy campaign director; Eric Cesari, at the time director general of the UMP; Pierre Chassat, who served as deputy director of the cabinet of Jean-François Copé – then secretary general of the UMP – and head of party communications; Guillaume Lambert, the former campaign director of Nicolas Sarkozy; Philippe Blanchetier, former treasurer of the financing association. Fabienne Ladzié, former financial director of the party, was sentenced to two years in prison, including 18 months suspended without additional punishment.
As for the directors of Bygmalion, Guy Alvès was sentenced to 18 months’ suspended prison sentence and Franck Attal to 12 months’ suspended prison sentence, accompanied for the latter two by a ban on managing a business for five years.
In September 2021, the Paris Criminal Court found him guilty of having significantly exceeded the legal spending limit and sentenced him for illegal campaign financing. The court, however, requested that this sentence be directly modified, at home under electronic surveillance. Thirteen other people were also sentenced to sentences of up to three and a half years in prison, part of which was suspended. Nicolas Sarkozy and nine other people appealed this decision and were retried from November 8 to December 7, 2023, during this trial before the Paris Court of Appeal.
During the appeal trial, the attorneys general requested a year’s imprisonment for him, but this time with a suspended sentence. Nicolas Sarkozy, as during the first trial, “vigorously contested any criminal responsibility”, denouncing “fables” and “lies”.
Multiple ongoing cases
In this case, the investigations revealed that to hide the explosion of expenses for his campaign – nearly 43 million euros for an authorized maximum of 22.5 million – a double invoicing system had been put in place attributing to the UMP (which has since become Les Républicains), under the cover of fictitious conventions, a large part of the cost of meetings.
Unlike his co-defendants, the former head of state was not accused of this system of false invoices. But, in its judgment, the criminal court had underlined that the former tenant of the Elysée had “continued the organization of electoral meetings”, “requesting one meeting per day”, even though he “had been warned in writing » of the risk of legal overrun, then of the actual overrun.
At first instance as during the appeal trial, his lawyer, Me Vincent Desry, pleaded for his release, ensuring that the former head of state had “never been aware of an excess” of the legal ceiling of election expenses and “never incurred expenses.” He considered that it had been “impossible” for the public prosecutor to “demonstrate the intentional element” nor the “material element” of the alleged offense.
Against the other defendants, the attorneys general had requested sentences of eighteen months to four years’ imprisonment, all suspended, as well as fines of 10,000 to 30,000 euros and bans on practicing or ineligibility for some of them. Among those who were part of the UMP at the time, only Jérôme Lavrilleux, at the material time chief of staff to Jean-François Copé and deputy director of the presidential campaign team, admitted to having covered the system of double billing. In May 2014, he helped reveal the scandal during a memorable interview with BFM-TV. At the bar, however, he disputed having been the one who set up the “breakdown system” of electoral expenses.
This case adds to other legal troubles for Nicolas Sarkozy: he was sentenced last May on appeal in the wiretapping affair to three years of imprisonment, one of which was closed, a decision against which he appealed in cassation. He will also appear in 2025 on suspicion of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign. He was also indicted, at the beginning of October, in the aspect of this affair linked to the retraction of the intermediary Ziad Takieddine.
