Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy in a landmark case involving millions of euros in illicit campaign funds from late Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The Paris criminal court delivered its historic verdict on Thursday, making the 70-year-old conservative politician the first former French head of state to be convicted of accepting illegal foreign funds to win office. Judge Nathalie Gavarino handed down the sentence alongside an immediate five-year ban from holding public office and a €100,000 (£87,000) fine, though the court acquitted Sarkozy of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and embezzlement of Libyan public funds.
The ruling comes just two days after the death of Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key witness who had claimed he delivered up to €5 million in cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy in suitcases during 2006 and 2007. Takieddine, 75, died in Beirut on Tuesday, having previously retracted and then reinstated his explosive allegations in a case that has captivated France for over a decade.
Judge Gavarino stated that Sarkozy, as a serving minister and party leader between 2005 and 2007, had “allowed his close collaborators and political supporters over whom he had authority and who acted in his name” to approach Libyan officials “in order to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support. The court found he was guilty of participating in a criminal association that prepared corruption offences, though it stopped short of concluding he directly benefited from the illegal financing.
Two of Sarkozy’s closest associates were also convicted in the sprawling conspiracy case. Former interior minister and right-hand man Claude Guéant was found guilty of passive corruption and falsification, whilst former minister Brice Hortefeux was convicted of criminal conspiracy. Eric Woerth, who served as Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign treasurer, was acquitted of all charges.
The prosecution had sought a seven-year prison sentence for Sarkozy, arguing he orchestrated a “corruption pact” with Gaddafi’s regime in 2005 whilst serving as France’s interior minister. Prosecutors alleged the deal involved obtaining campaign financing in exchange for rehabilitating Libya’s international reputation and promising leniency for Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, Abdullah al-Senussi, who had been convicted in France for the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing that killed 170 people.
Sarkozy, accompanied by his wife, Italian-born former supermodel and singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, sat in the front row of defendants as the verdict was delivered. His three adult sons were also present in the packed courtroom filled with journalists and members of the public. The former president, who has consistently denied all wrongdoing, is expected to appeal the conviction, which would suspend the sentence pending the outcome under French law.
The case has its roots in March 2011 when, amidst the Arab Spring uprisings, a Libyan news agency first reported that Gaddafi’s government had secretly financed Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. “It’s thanks to us that he reached the presidency,” Gaddafi himself claimed in an interview, adding: “We provided him with the funds that allowed him to win.”
These explosive allegations emerged as Sarkozy was spearheading France’s push for NATO military intervention against Gaddafi’s regime, a stark reversal from December 2007 when the Libyan leader had pitched his heated Bedouin tent in the gardens of a Parisian mansion during a state visit. Gaddafi was killed by rebel forces in October 2011 following the NATO-backed uprising.
In 2012, French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it claimed was a Libyan intelligence memo dated December 2006, referencing a €50 million funding agreement for Sarkozy’s campaign. The former president denounced the document as a forgery and unsuccessfully sued for defamation, prompting investigative judges to launch a formal probe in 2013.
The prosecution’s case was built on testimony from seven former Libyan dignitaries, documented trips to Libya by Guéant and Hortefeux, financial transfers through offshore accounts, and the notebooks of former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem, who was found drowned in Vienna’s Danube river in 2012 with references to payments “for Sarkozy”.
Sarkozy’s wife has also been ensnared in the scandal. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was charged in July 2024 with witness tampering and participation in a criminal association, accused of attempting to pressure Takieddine to retract his incriminating testimony. She was placed under judicial supervision with a ban on contacting co-accused individuals except her husband, and investigators discovered she had deleted all messages exchanged with French “paparazzi queen” Michele Marchand on the day Marchand was charged.
The Libya case marks the latest in a series of legal setbacks for Sarkozy since leaving office in 2012. In 2021, he became the first former French president to receive a custodial sentence when convicted of corruption and influence peddling for attempting to bribe a judge. Last December, the Paris appeals court ruled he could serve his one-year sentence at home wearing an electronic tag rather than in prison.
In February 2024, an appeals court upheld his conviction for illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid, known as the “Bygmalion affair”. He was found guilty of spending almost twice the legal limit of €22.5 million and using a public relations firm to hide the overspending through fake invoices, receiving a one-year sentence with six months suspended.
The former president has also been stripped of France’s highest honour, the Legion of Honour, following his corruption conviction, marking an unprecedented fall from grace for a man who once wielded enormous power on the international stage.
Speaking before the verdict, Sarkozy told Le Figaro newspaper: “It will take as long as it takes, but I will fight to the end to prove my innocence.” His lawyer Christophe Ingrain had argued his client did not need Libyan funding for his presidential campaign, asking the court: “Why would he feel the need for another means of funding? How much did he ask for? How would this money have arrived in France?”
The verdict represents a watershed moment in French politics, potentially undermining public confidence in the political establishment at a time when trust in institutions is already fragile. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, was herself sentenced to prison and banned from running for office in December for embezzling European Union funds, though she too is appealing.
During the three-month trial earlier this year, the court examined evidence ranging from the mysterious drowning of witnesses to claims that Sarkozy’s government protected Gaddafi’s former chief of staff, Bechir Saleh. Prosecutors painted a picture of wide-reaching corruption involving Libyan spies, arms dealers and suitcases of cash allegedly shipped to Paris.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the late dictator’s son, reiterated accusations against Sarkozy as recently as January 2025, claiming the former president had personally pressured him to deny the financing scandal. The first thing we ask of this clown is that he return the money to the Libyan people,” he had stated in 2011.
The case has exposed the murky intersection of French politics and Middle Eastern diplomacy, raising questions about France’s role in the 2011 NATO intervention that left Libya in chaos. Critics have highlighted the hypocrisy of a leader who allegedly took millions from Gaddafi before leading the military campaign that resulted in the dictator’s downfall.
As Sarkozy prepares his appeal, the verdict sends a stark message that even former presidents are not above the law in France, where political corruption scandals have repeatedly shaken public faith in democratic institutions. The case’s conclusion, more than a decade after the allegations first surfaced, demonstrates both the tenacity of French investigators and the complexity of prosecuting high-level political corruption spanning international borders.
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Image Credit:
Nicolas Sarkozy (29 October 2015, cropped) — photo by European People’s Party, licensed CC BY 2.0
