Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy found guilty of conspiracy in Gaddafi finance trial

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Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of criminal conspiracy, but has been cleared of all other charges, including corruption.

The former president, 70, was found not guilty of having his 2007 presidential election campaign financed by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi at a court in Paris on Thursday.

The court found him guilty on the charge of criminal conspiracy, but not guilty of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, and concealing the embezzlement of public funds.

Sarkozy denied the charges during the three-month trial, saying the case was politically motivated. He is free to appeal the verdict, which will suspend sentencing until appeal judges rule on the case.

Prosecutors have argued he should be jailed for seven years.

He was accompanied in court by his wife, singer and model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and his three sons.

Earlier this year, Sarkozy was stripped of his Legion of Honour medal, France's highest accolade, after he was convicted of corruption in a separate case.

He was found guilty of trying to bribe a magistrate for information about a legal case in which he was implicated in 2014 and sentenced to a year on electronic tag, of which six months were suspended. After three months, it was ruled he could remove the monitoring device due to his age.

In another case last year, he was sentenced to a year on house arrest for illegal campaign financing during his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid, having spent almost twice the allowed amount.

Despite his criminal record, Sarkozy has remained an influential figure within the French Right.

During the Gaddafi finance trial, he described the case against him as a "plot" staged by the "Gaddafi clan" and other "liars and crooks".

He claimed it was revenge for his decision to call for Gaddafi to be removed from office.

Light shed on French-Libyan relations during Gaddafi's rule

The allegations stretch back to 2011 when a Libyan news agency reported that Gaddafi had said Libya had secretly sent millions of euros to Sarkozy's election campaign.

A year later, French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it claimed to be a piece of Libyan intelligence referencing a £43.7m funding agreement, which Sarkozy rubbished and saw him sue for defamation.

Magistrates in France later ruled the memo was authentic, but it was not referenced during the most recent trial.

In this case, Sarkozy had 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers.

Two of them, Claude Gueant and Brice Hortefeux, both among his closest confidantes during his presidency, were also found guilty of criminal association but not guilty on other charges.

The trial shed light on France's relationship with Libya during the 2000s, when Gaddafi, who was toppled and killed in 2011, was trying to restore diplomatic ties with Western countries.

It also saw investigators scrutinise several trips to Libya made by people in Sarkozy's inner circle while he was still interior minister between 2005 and 2007 - including his chief-of-staff.

In a key development in 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart he had delivered suitcases full of cash from Tripoli to the French interior ministry while Sarkozy was in charge - but later retracted the claims.

Mr Takieddine, who was one of the co-defendants, died aged 75 on Tuesday in Beirut, according to his lawyer Elise Arfi said. He fled to Lebanon in 2020 and did not attend the trial.

His change-of-heart is now subject to a separate investigation into alleged witness interference - but it has not yet gone to trial.

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