French Ex-President Sarkozy Convicted for Illegally Financing His 2012 Campaign

Nicolas Sarkozy denied wrongdoing, claiming he was too busy to pay attention to campaign finances.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. 

(File Photo: Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn/IANS)

Nicolas Sarkozy, who served as the President of France from 2007 to 2012, was convicted by a court in Paris on Thursday, 30 September after it found him guilty of illegally financing his failed 2012 presidential re-election campaign, Reuters reported.

The prosecution said that Les Républicains, the political party led by Sarkozy in 2012, spent almost two times the amount of money that is permitted by French electoral law on his campaign and that he hired a PR agency to keep this fact a well-hidden secret.

Sarkozy has denied the allegations, claiming that he had no time to discuss "the cost of flags", and that he had "too much to do", the Reuters report added.

The court maintained that the former president had knowledge of the overspending, and he didn't act to stop it or do anything about it.

This was Sarkozy's second conviction of the year. In March, he was found guilty of corruption while attempting to bribe a judge so that he could obtain information about a judicial inquiry that was strictly confidential.

(With inputs from Reuters.)