Nicolas Sarkozy Convicted in Explosive Campaign Financing Case
Former French chairman Nicolas Sarkozy has once again set himself on the wrong side of the law after a Paris court delivered a partial shamefaced verdict in a long-winding disquisition into contested Libyan crusade backing.
Judges ruled on Thursday that Sarkozy was guilty of felonious conspiracy, though he was cleared of charges of unresistant corruption and illegal crusade backing.
Condemning is anticipated to follow later, with the 69-year-old ex-leader facing an implicit captivity term of over seven years.
This ruling marks yet another chapter in a string of corruption cases involving the man who led France between 2007 and 2012.
The high-profile trial centred on claims that Sarkozy received millions in covert donations from the late Libyan oppressor Moammar Gadhafi to fund his successful 2007 presidential shot.
Independent Judiciary in France & it’s Powers
:- France’s Ex-Prez Nicolas Sarkozy held guilty on Thursday of criminal conspiracy, allegedly accepting illegal €50 million campaign financing from Libya’s Col Muammar Gaddafi.
:- Sarkozy won 2007 election using €50 millions pic.twitter.com/e8AuEG4SKA— Dr. Ratnakar Gedam (@RatnakarGedam) September 25, 2025
Franco- Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, the crucial figure in the case, contended he channeled € 5 million in cash to Sarkozy’s chief of staff between 2006 and 2007.
Takieddine, who dramatically retracted and then reinstated his accusations, died suddenly in Beirut earlier this week.
His evidence had indicted Sarkozy of offering to help rehabilitate Gadhafi’s transnational standing at a time when the Libyan sovereign was a global leper, extensively linked to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Gadhafi was killed in 2011 during Libya’s violent insurrection and NATO-backed intervention. Sarkozy’s woman, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is also entangled in the case, indicted alongside her hubby of trying to silence substantiations.
Both deny any wrongdoing. The former chairman appeared composed in court but didn’t speak to journalists later.
Eleven other numbers stand indicted alongside Sarkozy, including former innards minister Brice Hortefeux, crusade finance principal Eric Woerth, and Claude Guéant, his former chief of staff.
Prosecutors say their case rests on evidence from former Libyan officers, secret passages to Tripoli, and handwritten notes from Libya’s former oil painting minister Shukri Ghanem, who was mysteriously set up dead in Vienna in 2012.
This is far from Sarkozy’s first legal battle. The ex-president has already faced two separate corruption convictions and has been stripped of France’s prestigious Legion of Honour.
Despite repeated denials, Thursday’s verdict deepens the shadow over a once-dominant figure in French politics, once hailed as a moderniser but now remembered for a series of courtroom dramas.
As sentencing looms, France watches closely. Will the former president walk free again, or finally face a prison cell? The answer could reshape the legacy of one of the country’s most controversial leaders.
