French prosecutors have requested a seven-year prison sentence and a €300,000 fine for former President Nicolas Sarkozy over allegations that his 2007 election campaign was illegally funded by the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s government.
The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) also recommended a five-year ban on Sarkozy’s civic, civil, and family rights, which would prevent him from holding public office or serving in judicial roles.
The trial, which began in January, is set to conclude on April 10. It marks the most serious legal challenge yet for Sarkozy, whose post-presidency has been marred by multiple scandals.
Sarkozy, 70, who served as France’s president from 2007 to 2012, faces charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of embezzled public funds, and criminal association. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
The case dates back to 2011, when Libyan state media and Gaddafi himself claimed that Libya had secretly financed Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. In 2012, the French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a €50 million funding agreement. Sarkozy dismissed the document as a forgery and filed a defamation lawsuit.
French investigators later deemed the memo authentic but found no conclusive proof that the alleged transaction took place.
Authorities also examined multiple trips by Sarkozy’s associates to Libya between 2005 and 2007. In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart he had delivered suitcases of cash from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry under Sarkozy. However, Takieddine later retracted his claim, prompting a separate probe into possible witness tampering.
Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, are under preliminary investigation in that case.
The Libya trial is the latest legal setback for the former president. In December 2024, France’s highest court upheld his conviction in a separate corruption and influence-peddling case, sentencing him to one year of house arrest with an electronic tag. That case emerged from wiretapped conversations uncovered during the Libya investigation