Why was former French President Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to jail?

A French court found Sarkozy guilty of trying to bribe a Magistrate by offering him a prestigious job in return for information about a criminal case against him. The case involved telephonic conversations between Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog that were taped by police in 2014.

Credit: Reuters

New Delhi: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail for corruption and influence-peddling on Monday (March 1).

A French court found him guilty of trying to bribe a Magistrate by offering him a prestigious job in return for information about a criminal case against him.

Sarkozy, however, will not go to prison as the court suspended two years of the sentence and allowed him to serve a year at home with an electronic tag.

The crimes were specified as influence-peddling and violation of professional secrecy.

What was the graft case against Sarkozy?

The case involved telephonic conversations between Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog that were taped by police in 2014.

French investigators were looking into claims that Sarkozy had accepted illicit payments from the L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his 2007 presidential campaign.

It was alleged that Sarkozy and Herzog tried to bribe Gilbert Azibert, a senior judge, in exchange for information about the investigation. He offered the judge a prestigious job in Monaco.

According to media reports, in one of the conversations, Sarkozy was heard telling Herzog, "I'll get him promoted, I'll help him."

On Monday, Sarkozy, along with the two co-defendants Herzog and Azibert, was convicted of corruption and influence peddling.

Herzog and Azibert were also sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended.

The judge observed that Sarkozy knew what he was doing was wrong and that his actions and those of his lawyer had given the public "a very bad image of justice".