Bygmalion case: Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to one year in prison

The series continues, after Bismuth, Bygmalion. The Paris Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced Nicolas Sarkozy to a one-year prison sentence for illegal financing of an electoral campaign in the context of the Bygmalion affair. Seven months ago, Nicolas Sarkozy was the first former president of the Fifth Republic to be sentenced to a prison sentence (including three years suspended) for corruption and influence peddling in the so-called “Bismuth” “wiretapping” case. He is appealing these two judgments. Each time, the personality of former President of the Republic of Nicolas Sarkozy weighed heavily in the balance. In her meticulous decision, President Caroline Viguier underlines “the exceptional gravity of the facts”. It thus notes that the former President of the Republic had “clearly taken advantage” of the vertiginous overrun of electoral campaign expenses estimated by the court at 20.208 million euros, for total expenditure of 42.7 million euros, more double the expenditure authorized by law. While he “was aware of the rule of law” and “had been warned in writing” of the risks, he nevertheless continued “the meetings and new expenses”. “It was not his first campaign, he had experience as a candidate, a knowledge of the law,” insisted President Caroline Viguier. The sentence imposed is greater than the requisitions of the prosecution, which had requested one year in prison, including six months suspended. But the former head of state will not go to prison: his sentence will be adaptable to home detention under electronic surveillance.

Solid gold campaign

From the 18th ^e meeting, estimates the court, that is to say that of the Porte de Versailles of March 31, 2012, each meeting additional “constituted an offense”. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was not present during the deliberation, had denied everything altogether. ” A fable ! He had carried away at the bar. “Where is the hectic campaign?” Where is the solid gold campaign? He had also chanted, taking everyone to task. Only he was accused of the offense of exceeding campaign accounts. Unlike his thirteen co-defendants – former executives of the campaign and of the UMP (now LR) as well as of the Bygmalion company which organized the meetings, accountants – Nicolas Sarkozy was not blamed for the system of double invoicing imagined to hide the explosion of authorized campaign expenses by attributing them to the UMP. The other defendants were all found guilty of complicity in “illegal campaign financing” and of having taken part, to varying degrees, in the implementation of the fraud. “They fabricated false documents”, “validated false invoices” or “participated in the preparation of a falsified campaign account,” the court declared.

Complicity in fraud

The court notes that “all took part in the scam through weekly meetings during which a set of documents was validated not only to measure the increase in expenses but also to break them down as well as possible”, and thus, according to the reasoning of the judges, “to put in place from March 2012 the fraudulent process and to validate it collectively”. Among the other defendants, his former campaign manager, Guillaume Lambert, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison, including two years suspended, for fraud and complicity in illegal campaign financing. For the same charges, Philippe Briand, ex-president of the campaign financing association, was sentenced to two years in prison, including one year suspended. Jérôme Lavrilleux, former deputy director of the 2012 presidential campaign, was convicted of breach of trust, complicity in fraud and illegal financing of the electoral campaign, and was sentenced to three years in prison, including one year suspended. He also received a three-year ineligibility sentence. He announced his intention to appeal. “I’m tired of all this,” he said as he walked out of the audience. The condemnation of the former president has provoked many reactions on the right. The two presidential candidates of 2022 Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand expressed their “friendship” to him, and the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, regretted the “severity as unusual as it is exorbitant” of the judgment.