Prosecutors seek to send former President Nicolas Sarkozy to prison for illegal campaign financing

(CNN) – French prosecutors have requested that former President Nicolas Sarkozy be sentenced to six months in jail in addition to a six-month suspended sentence, a spokesman for the prosecutor told CNN on Thursday.

Prosecutors also requested a fine of 3,750 euros (about US $ 4,466), the spokesperson added.

The former president, who led France from 2007 to 2012, is on trial for illegally funding his failed 2012 re-election campaign.

Separately, in March 2021, a French court sentenced former President Sarkozy to three years in prison for corruption and influence peddling, but suspended the sentence for two years.

Nicolas Sarkozy was president from 2007 to 2012 and was convicted of illegally trying to obtain information from a high-ranking magistrate in 2014 about an ongoing investigation into his campaign finances.

The judge said Sarkozy did not need to spend time in jail. You could serve your sentence by wearing an electronic bracelet at home.

The Paris prosecutor had requested a two-year prison sentence and a two-year suspended sentence for Sarkozy and his co-defendants, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and former magistrate Gilbert Azibert.

Herzog and Azibert were found guilty and sentenced to prison.

Other French leaders convicted

In 2011, former French President Jacques Chirac was found guilty of embezzlement of public funds and sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term for the employment of fictitious civil servants when he was mayor of Paris in the early 1990s.

The last French head of state sentenced to prison was Marshal Philippe Pétain in 1945, for treason after collaborating with the Nazis.

– With information from Joseph Ataman and Lorraine Poupon