Sarkozy prison date to be set. Here’s why the former French president will serve time despite appeal

PARIS (AP) – The date for Nicolas Sarkozy’s imprisonment will be set Monday, after the former French president was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his winning 2007 campaign with funds from Libya.

Sarkozy, 70, says he’s innocent. He denounced the verdict as “a scandal” and filed an appeal. He is the first former president of modern France sentenced to actual time behind bars.

Sarkozy, who was involved in several other legal cases, was France’s president from 2007 to 2012. He has been retired from active politics for years but remains very influential, especially in conservative circles.

In a surprise decision, the Paris court said the prison sentence, which would otherwise have been suspended on appeal, is effective immediately.

Sarkozy must be incarcerated without delay, the court explained, because “of the seriousness of the disruption to public order caused by the offense,”

Still, Sarkozy was given 18 days since the ruling to “organize his professional life” before his summoning by the National Financial Prosecutor’s office to set a date for incarceration.

Sarkozy’s supporters criticized the ruling because Sarkozy, since he appealed, is presumed to be innocent according to French law.

The debate has been recently revived after far-right leader Marine Le Pen was sentenced in March to a five-year ban on running for public office for embezzling EU funds, also taking effect immediately despite her appeal.

Sarkozy’s case does not appear as an exception in France’s judicial system. The justice ministry said in 2024, 90% of adults convicted and sentenced to at least two years in prison were immediately incarcerated.

The court said Sarkozy, as a presidential candidate and interior minister, used his position “to prepare corruption at the highest level” from 2005 to 2007, to finance his presidential campaign with funds from Libya – then led by longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

The panel of three judges stated that Sarkozy’s closest associates, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, held secret meetings in 2005 with Abdullah al-Senoussi, Gadhafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief, despite the fact that he was “convicted of acts of terrorism committed mostly against French and European citizens.”

Al-Senoussi is considered the mastermind of attacks on a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and a French airliner over Niger the following year – causing hundreds of deaths. He was convicted and sentenced in absentia to a life sentence by a Paris court in 1999 for the attack on the French UTA Flight 772.

The court also said there was evidence Sarkozy endorsed meetings between Guéant, then his chief of staff, and an intermediary able to provide secret financial arrangements.

Sarkozy consistently said he is innocent and the victim of “a plot” staged by some people linked to the Libyan government, including what he described as the “Gadhafi clan.”

He suggested that the allegations of campaign financing were retaliation for his call – as France’s president – for Gadhafi’s removal.

Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world. Gadhafi was toppled and killed in the uprising that same year, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

In addition, Sarkozy insists the court cleared him of three other charges, including passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealing the embezzlement of public funds.

The court said there’s no evidence the money transferred from Libya to France ended up being used in Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign and acknowledged it was not used to serve his “direct personal enrichment.”

For safety reasons, Sarkozy is expected to be incarcerated under conditions reserved for high-profile inmates, possibly in a special area that has been dubbed the “VIP area” of La Santé prison, the only prison located in Paris. This is where some of France’s most notorious criminals have been imprisoned.

Once behind bars, Sarkozy will be able to file a release request to the appeals court. Judges will then have up to two months to process the request.

An appeal trial is to take place at a later date, possibly next spring.

French business owner Pierre Botton, who is a friend of Sarkozy, spent almost four years in prison in two separate cases, including from 2020 to 2022 at La Santé.

He described incarceration as a “violent” shock “for anyone,” speaking on France Info news broadcaster after the ruling.

He said Sarkozy would likely spend a week in the arrival area to be “assessed” then transferred into the so-called “area for vulnerable personalities” for safety reasons.

Sarkozy will likely be alone in the prison cell, which is equipped with a shower, toilet, small heating element, a fridge and a television, Botton described. He will have access to a special phone he’ll need to pay to use, Botton said.