Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, received a five-year jail sentence on Thursday as he was convicted of criminal conspiracy linked to the efforts of his close aides to secure campaign funds for his 2007 presidential run from Libya, under the regime of the now-deceased dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Sarkozy was acquitted by a Paris court of all other charges, including corruption and receiving illegal campaign financing.

But the ruling means the former president will spend time in jail even if he appeals, a sentence much harsher than many expected.

The court announced that Sarkozy is to enter custody at a later time, allowing prosecutors a month to notify him when he needs to report to prison.

Judge Nathalie Gavarino determined that Sarkozy was guilty of enabling his associates to seek financial backing from the Libyan government.

It is the first time that a former French head of state has been found guilty of trying to use foreign money in such a manner. 

Sarkozy, who won the presidential election in 2007 but failed to be re-elected in 2012, refuted any misconduct during a trial spanning three months earlier this year, involving 11 additional defendants, inclusive of three past ministers.

Arriving at a courtroom packed with journalists and spectators, Sarkozy was accompanied by his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, a singer and model. He took a seat in the front line of the defendants’ area. Present in the courtroom were his three adult sons as well.

Though numerous legal issues have tainted his tenure, Sarkozy maintains a significant influence in Right-wing political circles in France and the entertainment industry, partly due to his marriage to Bruni-Sarkozy.

The accusations trace their roots to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gadhafi himself said the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.

In 2012, the French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a 50 million-euro funding agreement. Sarkozy denounced the document as a forgery and sued for defamation.

French magistrates later said that the memo appeared to be authentic, though no conclusive evidence of a completed transaction was presented at the three-month Paris trial.

Investigators also looked into a series of trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy when he served as interior minister from 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff.

In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart that he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted his statement.

That reversal is now the focus of a separate investigation into possible witness tampering. Both Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were handed preliminary charges for involvement in alleged efforts to pressure Takieddine. That case has not gone to trial yet.

Takieddine, who was one of the co-defendants, died on Tuesday in Beirut, his lawyer Elise Arfi said. He was 75. He had fled to Lebanon in 2020 and did not attend the trial.

Sarkozy was tried on charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of the embezzlement of public funds and criminal association. Prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy had knowingly benefited from what they described as a ‘corruption pact’ with Gadhafi’s government.

Libya’s longtime dictator was toppled and killed in an uprising in 2011, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

The trial shed light on France’s back-channel talks with Libya in the 2000s, when Gadhafi was seeking to restore diplomatic ties with the West. Before that, Libya was considered a pariah state.

Sarkozy has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated and reliant on forged evidence. During the trial, he denounced a ‘plot’ he said was staged by ‘liars and crooks’ including the ‘Gadhafi clan.’

He suggested that the allegations of campaign financing were retaliation for his call – as France’s president – for Gadhafi’s removal.

Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world.

‘What credibility can be given to such statements marked by the seal of vengeance?’ Sarkozy asked in comments during the trial.

In June, Sarkozy was stripped of his Legion of Honor medal – France’s highest award – after his conviction in a separate case.

Earlier, he was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling for trying to bribe a magistrate in 2014 in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated.

Sarkozy was sentenced to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for one year. He was granted a conditional release in May due to his age, which allowed him to remove the electronic tag after he wore it for just over three months.

In another case, Sarkozy was convicted last year of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 reelection bid. He was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount and was sentenced to a year in prison, of which six months were suspended.

Sarkozy has denied the allegations. He has appealed that verdict to the highest Court of Cassation, and that appeal is pending