Sarkozy will complete a year of house arrest for corruption and will wear an electronic bracelet

The Court of Appeals of Paris has confirmed this Wednesday the sentence to the Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to three years in prison, two exempt from compliance, for a crime of corruption committed in 2014. It is the same sentence to which he was sentenced in March 2021 in the first instance.

Sarkozy, 68, arrived at the court wearing a dark gray suit and with gestures of evident nervousness. He bumped fists with his lawyers and smiled occasionally as he took a seat before proceedings began, which ended with his conviction being upheld despite the fact that He denied wrongdoing.

“Nicolas Sarkozy is innocent“, lawyer Jacqueline Laffont told reporters as she left the court. “We will take this to the end. We are just at the beginning of the process,” she added, confirming that will challenge the failed appeal.

[Sarkozy, ante el juez: “Nunca cometí el mínimo acto de corrupción”]

In this way, Sarkozy becomes the first former head of state sentenced to an effective prison sentence, although he will not go to prison because the court specified in his sentence that he can serve the sentence under house arrest and with a electronic bracelet.

The former president was sentenced in the first instance in March 2021 to three years in prison, two of them exempt from compliancefor a crime committed in 2014, two years after leaving power, when, according to the sentence, he used his influence for gain in another cause.

Specifically, Sarkozy was found guilty of try to bribe a judge and influence peddling in exchange for confidential information about an investigation into the finances from his 2007 campaign.

This ruling marked a startling fall from grace for a former president who became one of the most powerful in the world, and since then has been one of the most important legal battles that Sarkozy has been waging for the last decade.