Overview

• Sarkozy’s five-year term carries provisional execution, and prosecutors will summon him within a month to set his date to enter custody.
• Judges acquitted him of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and related counts linked to the 2007 race.
• The court said he allowed close aides to seek Libyan funds between 2005 and 2007, while noting it could not prove that Libyan money ultimately financed the campaign.
• Co-defendants included Claude Guéant, sentenced to six years, and Brice Hortefeux, sentenced to two years, as former treasurer Éric Woerth was acquitted.
• Sarkozy denounced the verdict as an injustice, vowed to appeal, and now becomes the first former French president set to serve a custodial sentence.