A police convoy transports former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (C, in car) to La Sante prison in Paris on Tuesday to begin a five-year sentence related to a campaign finance scandal involving money from Libya. Photo by Yoan Valat/EPA
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy reported to a high-security Paris prison Tuesday to begin a five-year sentence for a conspiracy conviction stemming from campaign finance funding from the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy, who is appealing his conviction, is the first president of France to go to prison in the 233 years since the founding of the First French Republic in 1792.
The 70-year-old was greeted by more than 100 well-wishers and supporters as he emerged from his villa in Paris’ upscale 16th arrondissement to make the short journey to the La Sante prison in the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine. Security was tight at the prison entrance.
Sarkozy, who occupied the Elysee Palace from 2007 to 2012, will be held in a small cell in solitary confinement for his own safety in the 19th-century penal facility where he will serve his sentence alongside drug kingpins and terrorists.
Sarkozy has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the case, which alleges his 2007 campaign for president was funded by millions of euros from Libya. He was convicted of criminal association with aides Brice Hortefeux and Claude Gueant, allowing them to covertly solicit funding from the Gaddafi regime in exchange for preferential economic and diplomatic treatment.
Former minister Hortefeux was also found guilty of criminal conspiracy, while Gueant was found guilty of passive corruption and forgery.
However, Sarkozy was cleared of corruption charges and illegal campaign financing.
“I have no doubt. Truth will prevail. But how crushing the price will have been. With unwavering strength, I tell [the French people] it is not a former president they are locking up this morning — it is an innocent man,” he wrote on X.
“Do not feel sorry for me because my wife and my children are by my side. But this morning I feel deep sorrow for a France humiliated by a will for revenge.”
Having lodged an appeal he remains innocent under the French legal system, but the seriousness of the case required that he be denied his liberty, pending the outcome.
His lawyers were expected to immediately go back to court to petition for a sentence variation, which could see him released into house arrest, where he would be monitored electronically.
Sarkozy, a former darling of French conservatism, appeared to retain the support of France’s political elites, with President Emmanuel Macron receiving him at the Elysee Palace as recently as Friday.
His former spokesperson, the now Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, said he met with his old boss since his Sept. 25 conviction and would visit him in prison in an official capacity out of “concern for his security.”
