Skip to content Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
France’s Supreme Court has upheld former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s corruption conviction, rejecting his appeal.
Wednesday’s Court of Cassation ruling means Sarkozy, who was in power from 2007 to 2012, must now wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for a year.
Sarkozy, 69, responded by saying he was not ready to accept the “deep injustice” and would now go to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the sentence.
He was originally sentenced to three years in prison in 2021, but two of those years were suspended and the third commuted to electronic monitoring instead of prison.
Sarkozy was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge in 2014, after he left office, by offering him a prestigious job in exchange for information on a separate case.
In a 2021 ruling, Judge Christine May said the conservative politician “knew what (he) was doing was wrong,” adding that his actions and those of his lawyer created a “very bad image of justice” in the public eye.
The crimes are listed as abuse of official influence and violation of official secrecy.
Speaking after the sentencing by the Court of Cassation on Wednesday, Sarkozy’s lawyer, Patrice Spinozzi, said his client would abide by the terms of the sentence.
Sarkozy has now exhausted all his legal options in France, and his planned appeal to the European Court of Human Rights will not delay the execution of the sentence.
The conviction in 2021 was a legal milestone for post-war France.
The only precedent was the trial of Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who in 2011 received a two-year suspended sentence for organizing fake jobs at Paris City Hall for allies when he was mayor of Paris. Chirac died in 2019.
