French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was convicted Thursday and sentenced to a year of house arrest for illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid, will appeal the ruling, his lawyer said.
The court said Sarkozy would be allowed to serve the one-year sentence at home by wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. Sarkozy'a lawyer, Thierry Herzog, noted that the sentence corresponds to the maximum his client faced. He said he had spoken with Sarkozy, who had asked him to appeal.
"The verdict won't be enforceable" pending appeal, he added.
The 66-year-old was not present at the Paris court for the verdict announcement. Sarkozy is accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount of 22.5 million euros ($27.5 million) on the reelection bid that he lost to Socialist Francois Hollande. In the end, his campaign spending came to at least 42.8 million euros, nearly double the legal limit. The court stated that Sarkozy "knew" the legal limit was at stake and "voluntarily" failed to supervise additional expenses. France’s president from 2007 to 2012 has vigorously denied wrongdoing.
The former French leader remains a hugely popular and influential figure on the right despite being caught up in multiple investigations since being voted out of the Elysee Palace after a single term in 2012. In March, he became France's first post-war president to be handed a custodial sentence when he was given a three-year term, two years of which were suspended, for corruption and influence peddling over attempts to secure favors from a judge.
Sarkozy's predecessor and mentor Jacques Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption while he was mayor of Paris. Sarkozy promptly appealed his verdict, and under French sentencing guidelines he has not yet been put behind bars – judges said he could wear an electronic ankle bracelet. Three months later he was back in the dock over his lavish 2012 reelection campaign.
'Accounting detail'
Sarkozy told the court that he had been too busy running the country to pay attention to an "accounting detail" and that the allegations he was reckless with public money are "a fairytale."
The case is known as the Bygmalion affair, after the name of the public relations firm hired to orchestrate a blitz of lavish U.S.-style election rallies. Bygmalion executives have admitted to using a system of fake invoices to mask the real cost of the events.
The investigation failed to prove however that Sarkozy had any direct hand in the fraud. The case failed to garner much interest among the public, with the charges seen as less sensational than the corruption charges that had already dented any prospect of Sarkozy making another comeback.
In 2016, he attempted to win back the Elysee Palace but failed to win the presidential nomination for the UMP party, since renamed The Republicans. Despite his political setbacks and legal woes Sarkozy still enjoys considerable sway in French politics, with conservative candidates in next year's presidential election vying for his endorsement.