Nicolas Sarkozy definitively sentenced to three years in prison, including one year in prison in the wiretapping affair

The Court of Cassation rejected Nicolas Sarkozy’s appeals on Wednesday, December 18, and made definitive the unprecedented conviction of the former head of state for corruption and influence peddling, to three years’ imprisonment, one year of which is closed under electronic bracelet, with three years of ineligibility.

These sentences, so far suspended, will be applied: the former president, 69 years old, will be summoned before a sentence enforcement judge (JAP) to have an electronic bracelet fitted.

“Nicolas Sarkozy will obviously comply with the sanction pronounced which is now final”commented to Agence France-Presse his lawyer, Me Spinosi. But the former president will refer the matter to the European Court in the coming weeks” of Human Rights (ECHR), specifies the lawyer, “ to obtain the guarantee of rights that French judges have denied him.” This referral does not, however, prevent the execution of the sanctions imposed.

The decision in this case, also called Bismuth, comes as the former tenant of the Élysée must appear from January 6, and for four months, at the Paris court, in the case of suspicion of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.

In the Bismuth case, the former head of state had been, having established in 2014, alongside his historic lawyer Thierry Herzog, a “corruption pact” with Gilbert Azibert, senior magistrate at the Court of Cassation, so that he can transmit information and try to influence an appeal filed by Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bettencourt affair. And this, in exchange for a “boost” promised for an honorary post in Monaco.

The three men were given the same sentence, with the lawyer banned from wearing black robes for three years. Claiming their innocence from the start, they filed appeals, raising twenty arguments, examined at a hearing on November 6, after which the decision was reserved.

Parallel investigation

Before the Court of Cassation, which rules on the correct application of the law and not on the merits of the cases, the Advocate General methodically recommended the rejection of each point of law raised. Emmanuel Piwnica, lawyer on the advice of Thierry Herzog, criticized a procedure which “should never have seen the light of day”speaking of a file in which “we no longer count the illegalities committed, the breaches, the attacks on fundamental rights”.

The defense insisted on two main points: first, it hopes that a recent decision of the Constitutional Council, dated September 28, 2023 and originating in the Fillon affair, will allow it to obtain a new trial. In the name of the rights of the defense which must not be “theoretical and illusory”this decision requires a re-examination by a new court of appeal of a request for annulment of the entire procedure, argued M^e Basement.

For years, the Sarkozy camp has in fact believed that the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) has unfairly ” hidden “ a parallel investigation, aimed at flushing out a mole who would have informed the former president and his lawyer that they were being wiretapped. The lawyers also contested the legality of the wiretapping at the heart of the case, a subject already debated many times in this case.

M^e Patrice Spinosi invoked a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of June 16, 2016: “Nicolas Sarkozy cannot be criminally convicted on the basis of exchanges he had with his lawyer”because they cannot be “used against him”he argued.

In 2025, the Court of Cassation will also have to rule on the former president’s appeal against his sentence to one year in prison, including six months in the Bygmalion affair, concerning the excessive spending of his 2012 campaign.