the constraints of the system after the decision of the Court of Cassation in the Bismuth/wiretapping case

The former president of the republic must be summoned by a sentence enforcement judge who will set the terms of his home detention. Business trips, trips, exit times… Nicolas Sarkozy will have to adapt his lifestyle.

Definitively sentenced on Wednesday to one year in prison under an electronic bracelet, former President Nicolas Sarkozy must now be summoned by a sentencing judge who will set the terms of his home detention.

Limited mobility?

The general public prosecutor’s office of the Court of Appeal must in fact refer the matter to a sentencing judge (JAP) in Paris to determine the terms of his home detention under an electronic bracelet, since the decision of the Court of Cassation. This JAP will then summon Nicolas Sarkozy to appear before him, in principle within 20 days (but these deadlines may vary).

During this meeting, the convicted person must provide supporting documents that the JAP will examine in order to determine the place of assignment (home) and release times, during the week and weekend. He may be allowed to leave his home between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. in order to work. And, the father of four children, remarried three times, will have to ask permission to go see them.

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Sports lover and supporter of PSG, he never misses a match of the capital’s football club. But that was before his prison sentence. Indeed, the ex-president lives in the 16th arrondissement which is more than 13 km from the Parc des Princes in Saint-Denis; he will have to request authorization to go to the stadium.

The JAP will then issue an order which will set these terms, a decision which Nicolas Sarkozy cannot appeal. The judge will also determine the date on which the bracelet will be placed. By law, the order must be made within 4 months of the sentencing decision, but again, time frames can vary.

Authorizations to request

On the scheduled day for the bracelet to be fitted, surveillance agents, who report to the prison administration, go to the convict’s home. They adjust the system on site and install the device: from there, if the condemned person is not at home at the set time, an alert is triggered.

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If he wants to change job, place of residence or if he wants to travel abroad, Nicolas Sarkozy must request prior authorization from the JAP. Accustomed to giving conferences in other countries, the former head of state will therefore have to request authorization from the JAP if he wishes to continue.

Then, over the months, the judge will have to decide whether to grant sentence reductions to the convicted person, based on the reports from the Prison Integration and Probation Service (SPIP) which follows him on a daily basis.

Nicolas Sarkozy will be imprisoned without detention. As he will be over 70 from January 28, he will be able to apply for parole before halfway through his sentence. This request would be considered but not necessarily granted.

The loss of the Legion of Honor?

Furthermore, the Grand Chancellery indicated to the local daily “Ouest-France” that the decision whether or not to withdraw the Legion of Honor from Nicolas Sarkozy should be studied in the spring of 2025.

“As he is definitively condemned, he incurs, according to the Legion code, a legal exclusion from the Legion of Honor and the National Order of Merit, of which he is Grand Cross, like all elected presidents”confirms the Grand Chancellery in the newspaper “Ouest-France”. And to specify that “this exclusion must be noted by the Council of the Order and then made official by an order from the Grand Chancellor published in the Official Journal. The order’s council meetings take place during the study of future promotions. »

Return to court from January 2025

The decision comes as Nicolas Sarkozy must appear from January 6, and for four months, at the Paris court, in the case of suspicions of Libyan financing by the dictator Muammar Gaddafi of his 2007 presidential campaign.

At the end of 10 years of investigation, the investigating judges considered the charges sufficient to accredit a scenario worthy of a film: that of a minister with presidential ambitions, who concludes a secret pact with a wealthy dictator so that he finances his electoral campaign, in exchange for a return to diplomatic respectability.

Tried from January 6 to April 10 for corruption, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy, Nicolas Sarkozy, 69, faces 10 years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros. The court can also impose up to five years of ineligibility.

The high court will also rule in 2025 on his conviction in the Bygmalion affair, which concerns his campaign expenses but this time for the lost election of 2012. A case not without echo with the Libyan affair.

“We can reasonably estimate that the excess” of 20 million euros in 2012 “also existed in 2007, but it was financed by external contributions, the main one of which could have been Libyan money”wrote the investigating judges, indicated AFP.