Sarkozy set to become France’s first ever jailed ex-president

Nicolas Sarkozy is next week set to become the first former French president in the modern era to go to jail, following his conviction for taking part in a criminal conspiracy to seek covert funding from Libya’s late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

He was told on Monday by prosecutors that he would be incarcerated on October 21, according to BFM TV, which added that the former president would be held in the Paris prison of La Santé. The date was confirmed by a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. Sarkozy has appealed his conviction.

Sarkozy was sentenced at the end of September to five years in prison, with one year suspended.

The guilty finding was the culmination of a years-long investigation that began after Sarkozy left office more than a decade ago. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing; and has dismissed the allegations as an attempt by Gaddafi allies to punish him for leading an international intervention in 2011 that ended the late Libyan ruler’s 42-year grip on power.

The Paris judges focused primarily on a sequence of events in late 2005 – which began with a trip to Tripoli by Claude Guéant, the then-chief of staff of Sarkozy, who was interior minister at the time, and ended with another by Brice Hortefeux, one of Sarkozy’s longtime political allies.