Sarkozy was found guilty of taking part in a criminal association but was cleared of corruption charges after Gavarin found that he had permitted his \u201cclose collaborators\u201d and \u201cunofficial intermediaries\u201d to try \u201cto obtain or attempt to obtain financial backing for his campaign\u201d for the presidency between 2005 and 2007.<\/p>\n
Those attempts included \u201cmeetings with Gadhafi\u2019s official representatives\u201d and \u201carranging transfers of public funds.\u201d\u00a0The court however said it could not establish with certainty that Libyan money reached Sarkozy\u2019s campaign coffers.<\/p>\n
Sarkozy was acquitted of the corruption charge because Gavarino ruled there was no proof he worked to implement a supposed deal struck by his associates \u2014 including future Interior Minister Claude Gu\u00e9ant \u2014 and Abdullah Senussi, Gadhafi\u2019s brother-in-law and former intelligence chief, in 2005. Gu\u00e9ant was found guilty but escaped prison time due to poor health.<\/p>\n
Gadhafi\u2019s regime was reportedly seeking a pardon for Senussi, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in France for his role in the bombing of a flight from Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, to Paris in 1989. All 170 people on board were killed.<\/p>\n
Gavarino concluded there was enough evidence that such a meeting took place and that Sarkozy\u2019s team had pledged to review Senussi\u2019s file \u2014 even without a guarantee of a pardon \u2014 and to normalize diplomatic relations with Libya before the election.<\/p>\n
Before Thursday, Sarkozy\u00a0had repeatedly professed his innocence<\/a>\u00a0and claimed to be the victim of a smear campaign coordinated by Gadhafi\u2019s allies after the former French president led the\u00a0NATO effort<\/a>\u202f to overthrow the Libyan dictator in 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarkozy was found guilty of taking part in a criminal association but was cleared of corruption charges after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2575,30,36,38,151507,12,33182,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-450368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-corruption","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-french-politics","12":"tag-muammar-gaddafi","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nicolas-sarkozy","15":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115264955714226003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}