France's Sarkozy awaits verdict in corruption trial
A French judge will deliver its verdict in the corruption trial of past chief executive Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, with prosecutors demanding he face jail time. Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and remains influential among conservatives, is accused of aiming to bribe a judge and of impact peddling in exchange for inside home elevators a study into his presidential campaign money.
Prosecutors told the courtroom the 66-year-old should be jailed for four years and help at a minimum of two. During his testimony, Sarkozy said he was the sufferer of is placed and denied ever committing an take action of corruption. "Never. Never abused my affect, alleged or real," he informed the courtroom in December. "What right do they need to pull me through the dirt such as this for six years? Will there be no rule of law?" Prosecutors allege Sarkozy wanted to secure a plum job in Monaco for judge.
Gilbert Azibert in return for confidential information about an inquiry into accusations that he previously accepted illegal repayments from L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his 2007 presidential campaign.This came to light, they state, while they were wiretapping conversations between Sarkozy and his legal professional Thierry Herzog after Sarkozy kept office, with regards to another investigation into alleged Libyan financing of this 2007 campaign.
Azibert, at the time a magistrate at France's top appeals courtroom for criminal conditions and well-informed on the Bettencourt inquiry, did not get the work in Monaco. Prosecutors would like the same punishment for Azibert and Herzog, who are on trial alongside Sarkozy.
Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, is the sole other president under France's post-war Fifth Republic to have faced trial after leaving office. Chirac, who died in 2019, was found guilty in 2011 of presiding over a system of ghost careers in Paris City Hall for politics cronies when he was mayor of the administrative centre. Handed a two-year suspended phrase, Chirac escaped providing time in prison.
