Lhe next few weeks should be tough for former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy. This Wednesday, December 18, the Court of Cassation dashed the last hopes of the former President of the Republic to escape the conviction for “corruption” and “influence peddling” pronounced by the Paris Court of Appeal in the folder called “Bismuth”. He received a one-year prison sentence, to be served at home, and a two-year suspended sentence.
This conviction is now effective, although the former head of state’s lawyers have announced an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (the latter is not suspensive).
Soon before the sentence enforcement judge
This ruling from the highest French court opens the way to a meeting with a sentence enforcement judge (Jap) who will set the terms of execution of home detention. The magistrate will have to set a range of constraints including the address at which Nicolas Sarkozy will be detained or the hours at which he will be able to leave his home.
Nicolas Sarkozy will then go to the premises of the Prison Integration and Probation Service (Spip) and will have an electronic bracelet attached to his ankle. In the event of deviation from the requirements set by the Jap, the bracelet will activate the alert signal transmitted to the centralizing center. And if serious breaches were recorded, the sentence enforcement judge could issue an arrest warrant. This is the first time that a former head of state has been adorned with such a device.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Me Herzog thought they were safe from prying ears since they used, like seasoned criminals, prepaid telephones.
In this case, Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of wanting to corrupt a senior magistrate of the Court of Cassation, Bordeaux resident Gilbert Azibert. In 2014, anxious to obtain information, or even to influence a judgment of the high court which concerned him, Nicolas Sarkozy, through his lawyer Me Thierry Herzog had suggested to the magistrate that he would support him in obtaining a position in Monaco in exchange for his services. The fact that the ex-president did not keep his promise does not extinguish the corrupt pact, the judges ruled. The latter were able to rely on abundant listening of telephone conversations. Nicolas Sarkozy and Me Herzog thought they were safe from prying ears since they used, like seasoned criminals, prepaid telephones, purchased in the name of Paul Bismuth, a childhood friend of Thierry Herzog.
If the bracelet was installed this winter, the sentence enforcement judge would have to provide special arrangements because from January 6 until April 10, Nicolas Sarkozy will have to go again to the Paris judicial court where he will be judged in in the context of the so-called Libyan financing affair. In this case, he will still answer for corruption, but also for criminal association and illegal financing of an electoral campaign. It was precisely during this highly sensitive investigation that the police discovered, incidentally, the “Bismuth” line…
The former head of state is also deprived of his civil rights (and therefore of voting) for a period of three years.
