Case of eavesdropping: Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to 3 years in prison including a farm for corruption

 Sylvie Claire / Mars 2, 2021

The former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced Monday in Paris to three years in prison, including a farm, for corruption and influence peddling in the so-called wiretapping case, born in 2014 of telephone interceptions with his lawyer Thierry Herzog.

Nicolas Sarkozy thus becomes the second former president convicted under the Fifth Republic, after Jacques Chirac in 2011 in the case of the fictitious jobs of the city of Paris.

The criminal court considered that a pact of corruption had been concluded between the former president, now 66 years old, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and the former high magistrate Gilbert Azibert, also sentenced to three years in prison, one of which was a farm.

On December 8, the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) demanded four years in prison against Nicolas Sarkozy, including two years in prison on the grounds that the presidential image had been damaged by the devastating effects of the affair.

Mr. Sarkozy was accused of having tried to obtain secret information from Gilbert Azibert, then a high-ranking magistrate, in 2014, through Mr. Herzog, in a procedure concerning the seizure of his diaries on the sidelines of the Bettencourt affair. This information was to be delivered by the magistrate in exchange for a helping hand for a prestigious position in Monaco.

Before the court, his lawyers had argued that in the end, Nicolas Sarkozy had not won his case before the Court of Cassation and that Gilbert Azibert had never had a position in Monaco. According to the law, however, it is not necessary for the consideration to have been obtained, nor for the influence to be real, in order to characterize the crimes of corruption and influence peddling.