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French court says Sarkozy should be tried over campaign funding
PARIS, Oct 25, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A French appeals court ruled Thursday that
former president Nicolas Sarkozy should stand trial on charges of illicit
financing of his failed 2012 presidential campaign.
Sarkozy, 63, will appeal the decision before the Cour de Cassation,
France’s court of final appeal, his lawyers said Thursday.
It is one of several legal inquiries which have dogged the rightwing
politician since he left office.
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 ($51 million) on
his lavish re-election bid — almost double the legal limit of 22.5 million
euros — via fake invoices.
Sarkozy 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 officials of his UMP party.
His defence team had also argued that the politician had already been
sanctioned for campaign overspending by France’s Constitutional Council in
2013.
But 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 campaign, have acknowledged the existence of fraud and false
accounting.
– ‘Restore my honour’ –
Sarkozy was president from 2007 until his defeat by Socialist rival
Francois Hollande in 2012.
The rightwinger has been fighting legal problems on several fronts.
He is also charged with corruption and influence peddling for allegedly
offering to help a judge obtain a plum retirement job in return from secret
information about another case.
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 Moamer
Kadhafi’s regime that he accepted millions of the slain Libyan dictator’s
cash for his first presidential campaign in 2007 — claims Sarkozy has
vehemently denied.
He attempted a comeback last year, taking the helm of the Republicans party
and hoping to be its presidential candidate, only to lose out to his former
prime minister Francois Fillon who was defeated in the election by Emmanuel
Macron.
In March, Sarkozy said he was “finished” with politics after being grilled
by investigators for two days over the Kadhafi charges, though he vowed to
clear his name and “restore my honour”.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1430 hrs