Prosecutors requested a seven-year prison sentence for former president Nicolas Sarkozy, on Thursday, March 27, in his trial on charges of allegedly accepting illegal election campaign financing, in a "corruption pact" with the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Prosecutors also requested a €300,000 ($330,000) fine and a five-year ban on being elected to office. Sarkozy sat stone-faced as the requests were read out, an Agence France-Presse reporter in the courtroom said.
Sarkozy, who served as French president from 2007-2012 and denies the charges, was already convicted and given a jail sentence in a separate influence-peddling case, a sentence he is currently serving with an electronic tag, rather than in prison.
Sarkozy later posted on social media that the prosecution's request was "an outrage," calling the allegations against him both "false" and "violent." "I will therefore continue to fight step by step for the truth, and for my faith in the wisdom of the court," he said.
Sarkozy said during the trial that he had never accepted any money from Gaddafi. "You will never ever find a single euro, a single Libyan cent, in my campaign," he said.
However, Prosecutor Sebastien de la Touanne said that, over the 12 weeks of hearings, "a very dark picture of a part of our Republic has emerged." He accused Sarkozy of a "frantic quest for funding" to satisfy a "consuming political ambition" and said that "only a prison sentence and a fixed fine" would be "capable of protecting society." Sarkozy "does not seem to appreciate the seriousness of the breaches of integrity" of which he is accused, the prosecutor added.