PARIS — Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has suffered a fresh legal setback after France’s highest appeals court on Wednesday upheld his conviction for illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid.
The ruling by the Court of Cassation makes definitive Sarkozy’s one-year prison sentence, half of it suspended, for massively overspending legal limits during the campaign and then taking part in a fraud scheme to conceal it.
Under French law, the former president is unlikely to go behind bars; the sentence can be served under house arrest, typically with an electronic bracelet or other restrictions determined by an enforcement judge.
The decision comes just two weeks after Sarkozy was released from jail pending appeal in a separate case, in which he was convicted of seeking illicit funding from Libya for his successful 2007 presidential campaign. He spent 20 days in Paris’ La Santé prison before being freed while that case proceeds.
Sarkozy has consistently denied wrongdoing in both matters and portrays the prosecutions as politically motivated, but Wednesday’s ruling closes the door on any further appeal in the 2012 “Bygmalion” affair, marking another heavy blow to the legacy of France’s 23rd president.
