Vincent McAviney: Europe Correspondent on the sentencing of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy claims his court case is politically motivated. 

He's been sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy, relating to illicit funds from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. 

He was acquitted of all other charges. 

Europe correspondent Vincent McAviney told Francesca Rudkin it's unclear whether he will spend the full five years in prison. 

He says the ruling means Sarkozy will spend time in jail even if he launches an appeal, which he intends to do. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And Vincent Mecaveny joins me now from Europe. Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Vincent, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Former French president Nicholas Psychosi has been seen since to
five years in jazz. Is this the third conviction? There
were two previous ones for corruption, weren't there?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, that's right. He's had a pretty checkered pass since
he left office. He was, of course a president of
France prior to the Francis Holans and he was sentenced
now to five years in jail. So he's going from
the Elise Palace to jail. And this is in a

(00:37):
case relating to millions of euros of illicit funds from
the late Libyan leader, Colonel Wuanmerga Daffy. Now there wasn't
a charge, there wasn't a successful conviction of sort of
having the campaign finances themselves. This is all about a
conspiracy to get money out of Libya for his election campaigning.

(00:58):
He was president two thousand and seven to twelve, so
quite a while ago now, But this case has worked
its way through the French justice system and in exchange,
he was reportedly going to help sort of wash Gadaffi's
international reputation. He was a pariah at this point. And
he reacted pretty strongly in court, taking down the justice
system and being very affronted and quite shocked, it seemed,

(01:19):
at the fact that he is actually going to have
to spend time in prison. His wife, the supermodel Carla Brunei,
was standing next to him, also looking fairly shell shocked
by it.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Do you think he will have to spend five years
in prison?

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I don't know if he will spell in the full
five years, but I think it's very likely he is
going to appeal against this, but he is going to
have to spend a couple of years, it seems, in
prison until potentially the result of that appeal.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Then's it, Maca. Then, thank you so much for the update.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
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