Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has lost an appeal against an earlier decision to send him to trial over charges of illegal campaign financing of his failed 2012 presidential campaign and his lawyer yesterday said that he would challenge the decision in France’s highest appeals court.
If Sarkozy stands trial, he would be the second French president in the dock since Jacques Chirac, who was president from 1995 to 2007.
Chirac was given a suspended sentence in 2011 after being convicted of misusing public funds.
The so-called “Bygmalion” campaign financing affair centers on accusations that Sarkozy’s party, then known as the UMP, connived with a friendly public relations firm to hide the true cost of his 2012 presidential election campaign.
France sets limits on campaign spending and prosecutors allege that the firm Bygmalion invoiced Sarkozy’s party rather than the campaign, allowing the UMP to spend almost double the amount permitted.
In upholding last year’s decision by a judge to put Sarkozy on trial, the appeals court in Paris rejected arguments from his legal team seeking to avoid a potentially embarrassing public ordeal of a trial as well as up to a year in prison if found guilty.
Prosecutors claim Sarkozy spent nearly 43 million euros (US$51 million) on his lavish re-election bid — almost double the legal limit of 22.5 million euros — via fake invoices.
Sarkozy, 63, has angrily denounced the charges, saying he was unaware of the fraud by executives at public relations firm Bygmalion, who are also facing trial alongside accountants and former UMP officials.
His defense team had also argued that the politician had already been sanctioned for campaign overspending by the French Constitutional Council in 2013.
However, that ruling involved just 364,000 euros of overspending and came before the revelations of the Bygmalion affair and fake billings.
Bygmalion executives as well as Jerome Lavrilleux, the deputy manager of Sarkozy’s 2012 election campaign, have acknowledged the existence of fraud and false accounting.
His lawyer said he would challenge the latest decision in France’s Supreme Cour de Cassation, or Court of Appeal.
After five years in power, Sarkozy was defeated by Socialist Francois Hollande when he ran for a second term in 2012.
He has since faced a series of investigations into alleged corruption, fraud, favoritism and campaign-funding irregularities.
Under French law, a suspect is not formally charged with a crime unless he is sent to trial.
On Oct. 8, Sarkozy lost a first appeal against facing trial over separate influence peddling and corruption charges.
In that case, Sarkozy is suspected of helping a prosecutor get promoted in return for leaked information about a separate criminal inquiry, and he faces charges of corruption and influence peddling.
That inquiry gave him the dubious distinction in 2014 of being the first former French president to be taken into police custody.
He has also been charged over accusations by former members of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime that he accepted millions of the slain Libyan dictator’s cash for his first presidential campaign in 2007 — claims that Sarkozy has vehemently denied.
In March, Sarkozy said he was “finished” with politics after being grilled by investigators for two days over the Qaddafi charges, though he vowed to clear his name and “restore my honor.”
Additional reporting by AFP
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