Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of corruption and trading in influence. He will spend a year in prison and two more years on probation.
Two more defendants were involved in the case — former lawyer of Sarkozy Thierry Erzog and ex-judge of the Constitutional Court Gilbert Azibert received similar terms, reports TASS.
Investigators became interested in the ex-French president following his election campaigns in 2007 and 2012. They assumed that Sarkozy spent more than he was supposed to, and he illegally received part of the money from the owner of the company L’Oreal, the billionaire Liliane Bettencourt.
Subsequently, the case for receiving money from Bettencourt fell apart, but it turned out that in 2014, Sarkozy, through the mediation of lawyer Erzog, tried to illegally obtain information from the judge about the progress of the investigation of the Bettencourt case, offering him a promotion.
This is the second time in the history of France that an ex-president has been brought to trial. In 2011, Jacques Chirac was found guilty of abuse of office and received a two-year suspended sentence.
