A French court on Thursday imposed a one-year sentence on former president Nicolas Sarkozy after finding him guilty of illegal campaign financing for massive overspending on his 2012 re-election campaign. The verdict came six months after he was found guilty of corruption in a separate trial.
Sarkozy, who spent nearly twice the legal limit on his failed bid for a second term in office, wasn’t present at the Paris court for the announcement of the verdict.
Moments after the sentence was announced, Sarkozy’s lawyer Thierry Herzog said he would appeal.
The 66-year-old right-winger pulled out all the stops in 2012 to try fend off the ultimately victorious Socialist candidate, François Hollande.
A series of lavish US-style election rallies caused his costs to spiral, with the final bill coming to at least 42.8 million euros $49.7 million), nearly double the legal limit of 22.5 million euros.
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The case is known as the Bygmalion affair, after the name of the public relations firm that set up a system of fake invoices to mask the real cost of the events.
Prosecutors had sought a one-year prison sentence, half of it suspended, for the former president. The verdict is not the same as a suspended sentence, as it goes down in his record as a full prison term.
