Paris (AFP)

Former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced Monday in Paris to three years' imprisonment, including one firm, for corruption and influence peddling in the so-called "eavesdropping" case, born in 2014 of interceptions telephone calls with his historical lawyer Thierry Herzog.

Nicolas Sarkozy thus becomes the second former president convicted under the Fifth Republic, after Jacques Chirac in 2011 in the case of fictitious jobs in the city of Paris.

On December 8, the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) had demanded against Nicolas Sarkozy four years' imprisonment, two of which were firm, believing that the presidential image had been "damaged" by this affair with "devastating effects".

Mr. Sarkozy was accused of having attempted to obtain in 2014, through Mr. Herzog, secret information from Gilbert Azibert, then a senior magistrate, in a procedure concerning the seizure of his diaries on the sidelines of the case Bettencourt.

Information that had to be delivered by the magistrate in exchange for a boost for a prestigious position in Monaco.

Before the court, his lawyers had argued that in the end, Nicolas Sarkozy had not been successful before the Court of Cassation and that Gilbert Azibert had never had a post in Monaco.

According to the law, however, it is not necessary for the consideration to have been obtained, nor for the influence to be real, to characterize the offenses of corruption and influence peddling.

© 2021 AFP