Overview
- The Court of Cassation confirmed the Bygmalion case judgment, leaving a one-year sentence in place with six months to serve, likely under house arrest with an electronic bracelet subject to a judge’s order.
- Judges found the 2012 campaign used false invoicing through Bygmalion to conceal spending of roughly €42.7–43 million, nearly double the €22.5 million legal cap.
- Sarkozy was held criminally liable as the beneficiary of the illicit funding in his capacity as candidate, not as the architect of the scheme.
- The court’s communiqué notes that the campaign director and two party officials were also definitively convicted in the case.
- This marks Sarkozy’s second final conviction after the corruption wiretapping case; he recently spent 20 days in La Santé prison on a separate Libyan-funding conviction and plans to publish a detention memoir on December 10.