Paris court to rule on Sarkozy corruption charge over alleged funds from Gaddafi

A Paris court is to rule today whether the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is guilty of receiving millions of euros in illegal election campaign funding from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, in the biggest political financing scandal in modern French history.

- Angelique Chrisafis

Judges will deliver their verdict after the state prosecutor recommended a seven-year prison sentence for Sarkozy, who went on trial with 12 other people - including three former government ministers - accused of criminal conspiracy to receive funds from a foreign dictator. All have denied wrongdoing.

It is the biggest corruption trial faced by Sarkozy, 70, who was France's rightwing president from 2007 to 2012. He has already been convicted in two cases: one for corruption and influence peddling over illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge, and another for hiding illegal overspending in the 2012 presidential election, which he lost. He has appealed against both convictions.

The three-month trial in Paris heard allegations of what investigative magistrates called a “corruption pact” forged between Sarkozy and the Libyan regime in which intermediaries allegedly delivered suitcases full of cash to ministry buildings in Paris to illegally fund Sarkozy's successful 2007 presidential campaign.