The Court of Cassation confirmed, this Wednesday, November 26, the conviction of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bygmalion case, which concerns illegal financing of the electoral campaign for re-election in 2012.
In this case, Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced on February 14, 2024 by the Paris Court of Appeal to one year in prison, with a six-month suspended sentence. The former president appealed to the Court of Cassation.
The Bygmalion case investigated a system of double invoicing and false invoices that aimed to hide excessive expenses in the electoral campaign. Spending reached almost double the legal maximum amount in the 2012 re-election campaign, which Sarkozy ended up losing to François Hollande.
The former French president has always denied knowing or having benefited from the false invoice system. At the center of the investigation was Bigmalion, a service company.
This becomes Sarkozy’s second definitive conviction, after the phone hacking case.