Nicolas Sarkozy will be tried from March 17 to April 15 in the Bygmalion case

Bygmalion case: Nicolas Sarkozy will be tried from March 17 to April 15 -

The former President of the Republic must already be tried at the end of 2020 in the so-called “tapping” case.

But Nicolas Sarkozy will appear from March 17 to April 15, 2021 in a second trial on his campaign costs for the 2012 presidential election, the Paris prosecutor's office confirmed on Thursday.

In this case, known as "Bygmalion", the former president will be tried for "illegal financing of the electoral campaign", an offense punishable by one year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros.

An overrun of more than 20 million euros

Concretely, he is being prosecuted for having exceeded the legal threshold for electoral expenses of more than 20 million euros, despite alerts from campaign accountants in March and April 2012.

A bitter procedural battle had taken place after Nicolas Sarkozy's dismissal for correctional purposes by Judge Serge Tournaire in February 2017. The former Head of State had challenged this decision before the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Council, brandishing the principle of

, according to which a person cannot be sanctioned twice for the same acts.

He felt he had already been punished definitively by the Constitutional Council in 2013, when the body had confirmed the rejection of his accounts for this overrun, which he had to reimburse.

However, this sanction related to a slippage of 363,615 euros, observed before the revelation in spring 2014 of a vast system of false invoices aimed at disguising the runaway expenses of its meetings, organized by the Bygmalion agency.

The Court of Cassation finally confirmed this referral to correctional on October 1.

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• Bygmalion

• Justice

• Nicolas sarkozy