Trial opens against exleader

PARIS — Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy went on trial Monday on charges of corruption and influence peddling in a phonetapping scandal, a first for the politician who has faced several other judicial investigations since leaving office in 2012.

Sarkozy is accused of having tried to illegally obtain information from a magistrate about an investigation involving him in 2014. He stands trial in a Paris court along with his lawyer Thierry Herzog and the magistrate, Gilbert Azibert. They face a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a maximum fine of 1 million euros ($ 1.2 million). They deny any wrongdoing.

Sarkozy and Herzog are suspected of promising Azibert a job in Monaco in exchange for leaking information about an investigation into suspected illegal financing of the 2007 presidential campaign by France’s richest woman, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

The Paris court has been placed under high security as hearings in the case, scheduled until Dec. 10, are taking place at the same time as another key trial — that of the deadly 2015 attacks at the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher supermarket.

Sarkozy says he never intervened to help Azibert, who never got the job and retired in 2014. A lawyer by training, Sarkozy accused judges of breaching lawyerclient privilege via wiretapping.

“I don’t want things that I didn’t do to be held against me. The French need to know … that I’m not a rotten person,” he told BFM TV earlier this month.

He said he was facing the trial in a “combative” mood.

Sarkozy remains a popular figure amid French rightwing voters. His memoirs published this summer, “The Time of Storms,” was a bestseller for weeks.