Former French president Sarkozy to get electronic tag after being convicted of graft

Nicholas Sarkozy is to be fitted with an electronic tag Friday after being convicted of graft, a source close to the case said, in a first for a former French president.

French’s highest appeals court in December ordered Sarkozy to wear the tag for a year, after finding him guilty of illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge.

A judge last week decided Sarkozy, 70, would wear the ankle monitor from February 7, the source said.

The right-wing politician, who was president from 2007 to 2012, would only be allowed out of his home at certain times, it said.

Sarkozy’s lawyer Jacqueline Laffont said procedure was “being followed” and she had no further comment.

The former head of state will however be able to apply for conditional release for people aged 70 and above. He turned 70 last week, the day he was summoned by the judge.

Sarkozy has been going to a Paris court three afternoons a week for the past month as part of a separate trial in which he is charged with accepting illegal campaign financing before his 2007 election. That trial is to run until April 10.

In the case for which he is to wear the tag, a court found that Sarkozy and his former lawyer, Thierry Herzog, had formed a “corruption pact” with judge Gilbert Azibert to obtain and share information about an investigating judge.

The deal was done in return for the promise of a plum retirement job for the judge.

The trial came after investigators looking into a separate case of alleged illegal campaign financing wiretapped Sarkozy’s two official phone lines, and discovered that he also had a third, unofficial one.

It had been taken out in 2014 under the name “Paul Bismuth”, and only used for him to communicate with Herzog.

The contents of these phone calls led to the 2021 corruption verdict.

Before Sarkozy, the only French leader to be convicted in a criminal trial was his predecessor Jacques Chirac, who received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption over a fake jobs scandal.

But Sarkozy is France’s first post-war president to have been sentenced to serve time.

(AFP)