Ex-president Sarkozy convicted of corruption and sentenced to jail
A Paris court has found French former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling and sentenced him to one year in prison and a two-year suspended sentence.
The 66-year-old politician, who was president from 2007 to 2012, was convicted for having tried to illegally obtain information from a senior magistrate in 2014 about a legal action in which he was involved.
The court said Sarkozy will be entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet.
This is the first time in France's modern history that a former president has been convicted of corruption.
Sarkozy's co-defendants - his lawyer and long-time friend Thierry Herzog, 65, and nowretired magistrate Gilbert Azibert, 74 - were also found guilty and given the same sentence as the politician.
The court found that Sarkozy and his co-defendants sealed a "pact of corruption" based on "consistent and serious evidence".
The court said the facts were "particularly serious" given that they were committed by a former president who used his status to help a magistrate who had served his personal interest. In addition, as a lawyer by training, he was "perfectly informed" about committing an illegal action, the court said.
Sarkozy had firmly denied all the allegations against him during the 10-day trial that took place at the end of last year.
The corruption trial focused on phone conversations that took place in February 2014.
At the time, investigative judges had launched an inquiry into the financing of the 2007 presidential campaign. During the investigation they incidentally discovered that Sarkozy and Herzog were communicating via mobile phones registered to the alias "Paul Bismuth".
Conversations on these phones led prosecutors to suspect Sarkozy and Herzog of promising Azibert a job in Monaco in exchange for leaking information about another case, involving France's richest woman, L'oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.
In one of these phone calls with Herzog, Sarkozy said of Azibert: "I'll make him move up ... I'll help him."
In another, Herzog reminded Sarkozy to "say a word" for Azibert during a trip to Monaco.
Legal proceedings against Sarkozy have been dropped in the Bettencourt case. Azibert never got the Monaco job.
Prosecutors have concluded, however, that the "clearly stated promise" constitutes in itself a corruption offence under French law, even if the promise was not fulfilled.
Sarkozy vigorously denied any malicious intention.
He will face another trial later this month along with 13 other people on charges of illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign.
His conservative party is suspected of having spent €42.8 million (£37m), almost twice the maximum authorised, to finance the campaign, which ended in victory for Socialist rival Francois Hollande.
In another investigation opened in 2013, Sarkozy is accused of having taken millions from then-libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to illegally finance his 2007 campaign.