The French prosecution has sought a seven-year jail term along with a €300,000 fine for ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy regarding claims that his 2017 election campaign received illicit funding from the administration of late Libyan head Muammar Gaddafi.

The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) also called for a five-year ban on Sarkozy’s civic, civil and family rights, a measure that would bar him from holding elected office or serving in any public judicial role.

The proceedings, starting in January and scheduled to end on April 10th, represent the most significant among several legal controversies that have overshadowed Sarkozy’s time since leaving office as president.

The former French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, who served as the country’s president from 2007 to 2012 and is now 70 years old, is facing accusations including being complicit in passive corruption, violating rules for campaign funding, hiding theft of state resources, and participating in a criminal group.

He has refuted any allegations of misconduct.

The accusations date back to 2011, when a Libyan news outlet and Gaddafi himself claimed that the Libyan government had covertly provided millions of euros to Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign.

In 2012, the French investigative platform Mediapart released documents they claimed were from a Libyan intelligence memorandum, indicating an agreement for financing amounting to €50 million.

Sarkozy condemned the document as fake and filed a lawsuit for defamation.

French magistrates later said that the memo appeared to be authentic, though no conclusive evidence of a completed transaction has been presented.

Investigators also looked into a series of trips by Sarkozy’s associates to Libya between 2005 and 2007.

In 2016, Franco-Lebanese entrepreneur Ziad Takieddine informed Mediapart that he transported suitcases containing money from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry during Sarkozy’s tenure.

He subsequently withdrew his comment. This about-face is currently at the center of an independent probe into potential witness intimidation.

Both Sarkozy and his spouse, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, have been initiated into a preliminary investigation regarding that matter.

Former ministers of Sarkozy, including Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux, and Éric Woerth, are among those standing trial, alongside another eight individuals.

But prosecutors have made clear the central figure is the former president himself, accused of knowingly benefiting from a “corruption pact” with a foreign dictatorship while campaigning to lead the French republic.

While Sarkozy has already been convicted in two other criminal cases, the Libya affair is widely seen as the most politically explosive and the one most likely to shape his legacy.

In December 2024, France’s highest court upheld his conviction for corruption and influence peddling,
sentencing him to spend a year under house arrest using an electronic monitor
.

That case stemmed from tapped phone calls uncovered during the Libya investigation.

In a separate ruling in February 2024, a Paris appeals court found him guilty of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid.

Sarkozy has dismissed the Libya allegations as politically motivated and rooted in forged evidence.

But if convicted, he would become the first former French president found guilty of accepting illegal foreign funds to win office.

A verdict is expected later this year.