A one-year suspended prison sentence was requested this Thursday for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a case under appeal over excessive spending on his presidential election campaign, which he lost in 2012.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Sarkozy “deliberately violated the legal limit on election spending.”
Prosecutor Bruno Revel noted that “these excessive expenses were not inevitable” but, on the contrary, “they were the result of a school imposed by the candidate.”
At first instance, prosecutors asked for a one-year prison sentence, suspended for six months, with Sarkozy being sentenced at first instance in September 2021 to one year in prison.
The court ordered that the sentence be served at home, under electronic monitoring.
For the other nine defendants in the dossier, called Bigmalion, named after the company that organized the candidate’s campaign rallies, prosecutors sought sentences ranging from 18 months to four years in prison, suspended, as well as fines of between ten thousand and thirty thousand euros for some.
Unlike the defendants, the former president is not at risk from a false invoice scheme designed to disguise a surge in his campaign spending to around 43 million euros, compared with the legal limit of 22.5 million euros.
But during the hearing of the first instance case, the court emphasized that the former tenant of the Elysee Palace “continued to organize election rallies,” “demanding one rally per day,” despite the fact that he was “even warned in writing.” the risk of exceeding the legal limit and then actually exceeding it.
In the appeal court on Friday, the day of his interrogation, as in the first trial, he “strongly disputed any criminal responsibility,” denouncing “fables” and “lies.”
But Sarkozy faces another trial. In May he was even sentenced to three months in prison, one of which was effective.
He will face a new trial in 2025 on suspicion of Libyan financing of his campaign in the 2007 presidential elections.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.