Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy will be forced to wear an electronic tag after losing an appeal against his conviction for corruption.
The Paris Court of Appeals upheld a three-year prison sentence handed to Sarkozy in 2021 after he was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge when he had left office.
He was also convicted of peddling influence in exchange for confidential information about an investigation into his 2007 campaign finances.
Two years of the jail term will be suspended, in line with the initial ruling, the appeal court ruled on Wednesday.
Sarkozy, 68, will wear the electronic tag instead of spending the third year of his sentence behind bars.
He has always denied any wrongdoing.
His lawyers branded the court ruling “stupefying” and vowed to challenge the decision at the High Court.
Defence lawyer Jacqueline Laffont insisted Sarkozy was “innocent of the charges” and said “we will not give up this fight”.
‘Wire-tapping affair’
Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, left the court without speaking to journalists.
He suffered a spectacular fall from grace following his conviction, known across the nation as the “wire-tapping affair”.
It is one of a number of legal battles the former president is embroiled in.
The case at the centre of Wednesday’s ruling is indirectly linked to alleged illegal financing for his campaign ahead of his 2007 election.
Investigators looking into money flows from Libya – for which he could face another trial – wire-tapped two of Sarkozy’s phone lines and discovered a secret line used by him and his lawyer Thierry Herzog.
Sarkozy plotted to secure a top job in Monaco for judge Gilbert Azibert in exchange for inside information about an inquiry into claims he accepted illegal payments from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.
The appeal court also upheld corruption and influence peddling charges against both Herzog and Azibert.
Presiding Judge Sophie Clement said Herzog’s judgement failed him because of his friendship with the former French president.
The lawyer breached professional codes of conduct by failing to warn Sarkozy that he was breaking the law, the judge said.
Sarkozy claimed he was unaware of what both Herzog and Azibert had discussed and argued wire-tapped conversations should not be presented as evidence in court.
However his arguments were rejected by the judge.
Sarkozy could be back in dock
French prosecutors are seeking to put Sarkozy and 12 others on trial over allegations the late Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s government secretly gave him €50m (£43m) for his winning 2007 election campaign.
The sum was more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time and would have broken rules against foreign campaign funding.
French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told independent French online newspaper Mediapart in 2016 how he delivered suitcases of cash from Libya to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff.
However Takieddine later changed his story and Sarkozy attempted to have the investigation shut down.
The French national prosecutor’s office announced its decision to seek a trial last Friday – with Sarkozy’s fate now in the hand of judges who will rule whether the case should proceed.
Judges in France typically follow such requests from prosecutors – although it is not a rule.
In an unrelated case, Sarkozy was sentenced in September to a year under house arrest for illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid, when he lost power to Francois Hollande.
Sarkozy and the late Jacques Chirac, who was also found guilty of corruption in 2011, are the only presidents during France’s 64-year-old Fifth Republic to be convicted by a court.
