France's top court upholds corruption conviction of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy

France’s highest court on Wednesday upheld an appeal court decision that found former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling while in office.

Sarkozy, 69, faces a year in prison, but is set to request that he instead be detained at home with an electronic bracelet — as is the case for any sentence of two years or less.

He was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling by both a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 for trying to bribe a judge and of peddling influence in exchange for confidential information about a probe into his 2007 campaign finances.

Patrice Spinosi, lawyer for Sarkozy, said the former president would appeal to the European Court for Human Rights to challenge the ruling.

"The challenge that I will be bringing to the European Court of Human Rights may, alas, lead to a condemnation against France," wrote Sarkozy on X.

"I want to once again state that I am clearly innocent," he added.

Spinosi added that Sarkozy would comply with the ruling which requires him to wear an electronic bracelet.

Sarkozy, who was France’s president from 2007 to 2012, retired from public life in 2017 although he still plays an influential role in French conservative politics.

It is the first time in France’s modern history that a former president has been convicted and sentenced to a prison term for actions during his term.

Sarkozy has been involved in several other legal cases. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Probe into campaign financing

The corruption case that led to Wednesday’s ruling focused on phone conversations that took place in February 2014.

At the time, investigative judges had launched an inquiry into the financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign.

During the inquiry, they discovered that Sarkozy and his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, were communicating via secret mobile phones registered to the alias “Paul Bismuth".

Wiretapped conversations on those phones led prosecutors to suspect Sarkozy and Herzog of promising magistrate Gilbert Azibert a job in Monaco in exchange for leaking information about another legal case involving Sarkozy.

Azibert never got the post and legal proceedings against Sarkozy have been dropped in the case he was seeking information about.

Prosecutors had concluded, however, that the proposal still constitutes corruption under French law, even if the promise wasn’t fulfilled. Sarkozy vigorously denied any malicious intention in his offer to help Azibert.

Azibert and Herzog have also been found guilty in the case.

Sarkozy is set to face another trial next month over accusations he took millions of dollars from then-Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to illegally finance his successful 2007 campaign.

Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, a fellow conservative, is the only other president to be convicted in modern French history.

Chirac was found guilty of corruption 2011 of misuse of public money during his time as Paris mayor and was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.