France: Sarkozy to be retried in appeal regarding Libyan financing from March 16 to June 3

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was sentenced to five years in prison for the Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign and spent 20 days in detention, will face an appeal trial from March 16 to June 3, as announced by the Paris Court of Appeal on Thursday.

The ex-leader (2007-2012) was sentenced on September 25 to five years in prison with immediate enforcement for conspiracy. He was incarcerated for three weeks at La Santé prison in Paris and was released under judicial supervision on Monday.

The Paris correctional court found the former champion of the French right guilty of knowingly allowing his associates to solicit hidden financing from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya for his victorious 2007 presidential campaign.

Alongside him, nine other individuals will be retried, including two former close associates of Sarkozy, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux—who both served as ministers of the interior under Sarkozy—as well as intermediary Alexandre Djouhri, who was sentenced to six years in prison in the initial trial and has been incarcerated since.

The court had terminated the proceedings against Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who died in September in Lebanon, and another former collaborator of Nicolas Sarkozy, Thierry Gaubert, who had already been convicted for the same offenses in a separate case.

The court also acquitted three individuals: Eric Woerth, former Minister of Labor and Budget under Sarkozy and treasurer of his 2007 presidential campaign; Edouard Ullmo, a former executive vice president of Airbus; and Saudi Ahmed Bugshan.

However, the national financial prosecutor's office (PNF) has appealed for all defendants except Ahmed Bugshan.

On Monday, just hours after his release from prison, Nicolas Sarkozy stated on platform X that he would prepare for his appeal trial to prove his innocence, asserting, "The truth will prevail."

Already definitively convicted in a case known as the "wiretaps," for which he received a one-year prison sentence, the former president will know on November 26 if the Court of Cassation, France's highest judicial authority, upholds or overturns his conviction in the Bygmalion case, which resulted in a one-year prison sentence, six months of which are firm, for the illegal financing of his lost 2012 presidential campaign.