“Tough on Crime” Former President Gets Convicted—In France

As politicians and prosecutors in the United States struggle with the question of how to hold Donald Trump accountable in his post-presidential life, there’s an example they might look to across the Atlantic: France. Specifically, the legal plight of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. 

In October 2020, prosecutors charged Sarkozy for his conduct in an alleged campaign finance scheme involving former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. And just this week, Sarkozy was convicted on corruption and influence peddling charges in a completely different corruption case. Like the American ex-president, Sarkozy faces a morass of legal problems—so many that anyone who learned Sarkozy had been convicted in a criminal case could be forgiven for asking: “Which one?”

It’s usually a big deal when a former president of a major European democracy gets convicted of criminal charges—and this is no exception. Sarkozy’s political mentor, Jacques Chirac, blazed the trail for post-presidential convictions in France, but Chirac’s ill health muted the significance of his in absentia conviction. Sarkozy is still spry and combative—but now, in all likelihood, politically dead. 

On March 1, a Parisian court convicted the former French president on corruption and influence peddling charges and sentenced him to three years in prison, two on a suspended sentence. Sarkozy doesn’t have to decamp to prison just yet. He can, and will, appeal his conviction. First he’ll plead his case to a domestic appellate court, but he has said that “perhaps it will be necessary to take this battle to the European Court of Human Rights.” That process is unlikely to break any land-speed records. And even if Sarkozy loses the appeal, he can petition to serve out his sentence from the comfort of his own home with an electronic tracker. Whether or not “President Bling Bling” ever dons a monitoring bracelet, the conviction puts a damper on any ambitions he might have had for France’s 2022 presidential ticket. 

However significant Sarkozy’s conviction might be, the whole thing is also pretty confusing. The conduct for which the court convicted Sarkozy belongs to a three-pack of scandals—“l’affaire des écoutes,” “l’affaire Bygmalion,” and “l’affaire Gaddafi”—that have kept Sarkozy in and out of French courts for the better part of a decade. All three cases have links to different campaign finance shenanigans. Add to that Sarkozy’s collection of other major scandals (Le Monde counts 12 in total) and the complexities of French criminal procedure, and everything can be a bit tough to parse. So, what exactly is going on? 

The two blow-ups not at issue here are l’affaire Bygmalion and l’affaire Gadaffi. Both directly concern alleged campaign finance snafus: Gaddafi for Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential run, and Bygmalion, the failed 2012 reelection bid. France has a strict 22.5 million euro cap on presidential campaign spending, and Sarkozy’s reelection tab in 2012 allegedly came in over budget. His center-right party, now called Les Republicains, reportedly came up with a creative accounting solution: cajole Bygmalion, the public relations firm hired by the Sarkozy campaign, into sending an 18 million euro bill to the party, rather than the campaign itself. 

The scandal began as a scoop that the head of the party shuttled a major campaign contract to some of his pals at Bygmalion, and the story blossomed from there. Sarkozy will stand trial starting on March 17 in that case, charged with overshooting the spending limit. It’s not clear how Sarkozy will fare at the Bygmalion trial, though some French legal analysts have noted that Sarkozy might be able to argue he wasn’t kept abreast of his campaign’s financing woes. 

Fudging the reelection books is bad, but taking suitcases of campaign cash from the Gadaffi family is much worse. L’affaire Gadaffi centers on the head-turning allegation, first reported in 2012 by the investigative outlet Mediapart, <
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