Nicolas Sarkozy faces conviction for corruption, key to his political future

Former French President Nicolas sarkozy This Monday will know the sentence of the trial which led him to the dock for corruption and influence peddling, for which the The prosecutor’s office asked against him two years in prison and that may determine your political future. The man who led France Come in 2007 and 2012 his public career can be permanently truncated if the court sentences him to prison, as demanded by the prosecution, which also requested two additional years in prison exempt from compliance.

Sarkozy, 66, is accused of having maneuvered in 2014 to obtain confidential information from a senior magistrate in another investigation opened against him in exchange for obtaining a post in Monaco. The case was discovered by investigators in the wiretaps between the former president and his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, as part of a third judicial investigation against him.

During the hearing, which took place in November and December, Sarkozy denied the charges, while his lawyers insisted on trying to invalidate the wiretap, in his opinion protected by the right to confidentiality between a client and his lawyer. The validity of these tests, which the court will have to assess in its sentence, seems essential to determine the meaning of its verdict, which will keep the French political class in suspense, especially on the right, always very attentive to the fate of its last. representative living in the Elysium.

Corruption pact

For the prosecution, there is no doubt that Sarkozy, his lawyer and the high magistrate Gilbert Azibert they made “a corruption pact“In February 2014, the tendency to obtain benefits in another survey, the so-called”Bettencourt case“. In it, in which the former president has already been acquitted, his diaries were seized at the Elysee Palace and Sarkozy sought to recover them, for which he went to Azibert, to whom, according to the indictment, he promised to help obtain a judicial post in Monaco.

“I will promote it“, he told him Sarkozy to his lawyer in one of those conversations made by investigators, who had his phone wiretapped in the case because of the alleged irregular funding of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007 with money from the leader’s regime Libyan at the time Muammar Gaddafi.

Herzog and Azibert face a sentence similar to that of the former president and in the case of the former The prosecutor’s office He also asked for a five-year ban from practicing law. Sarkozy took advantage of the trial to proclaim his innocence and present himself as a victim of Office of the Financial Prosecutor, an institution created by his successor, the socialist Francois Hollande, to pursue political corruption and that he has several outstanding accounts with the former conservative president.

“I have never committed any act of corruption. I have never trafficked in influence, intentional or real“Said the former head of state, the first to France who sat on the platform.

Sarkozy noted the “crueltyThe prosecution against him and justified the conversations with his lawyer in the trust between the two, who had worked together for years and had nothing to do with corruption or influence peddling. “It is clear from the conversations that there is a very agitated defendant and an affectionate lawyer who wants to reassure him.“, He explained Sarkozy, who recognized that, taken out of context, these exchanges could give false impressions.

The sentence can be the last slab for Sarkozy, retired from the first political line since in 2016 he failed in his attempt to become again the conservative candidate for the presidency of the country, defeated in the primaries by his former Prime Minister Francois Fillon. Despite this, the “Sarcozism“Is still very much alive within the right, orphan of a figure that unites the party since its defeat in 2012 against Holland.

In case of acquittal, his legal ordeal will not be over. In March, he is expected to return to court in the case which investigates alleged irregularities in the financing of his 2012 campaign. In addition, the investigation into the financing of his 2007 presidential campaign with Libyan money is still under investigation and his name also appears in investigations into compensation paid to the former minister and businessman Bernart Tapie on the order of surveys without public competition in its time on the Elysee Palace or in the sales of helicopters to Kazakhstan and weapons to Pakistan.

(With EFE information) .-

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