Palace to prison: Sarkozy's stunning fall from grace

France's former 'hyper-president' has been sent to jail - the latest twist in a career steeped in drama and controversy

- PETER POPHAM

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy was at the pinnacle of French politics for just five years, but left a long and lurid trail of corruption allegations behind him.

Eight years after retiring from politics, the man known as the “hyper-president” remains influential, a trusted adviser to Emmanuel Macron, who turned to the fiery right-winger when his centrist liberalism wilted under attack from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party.

Yet this pillar of the French state was under house arrest and wore an ankle tag, following a conviction for attempting to bribe a judge. In a separate case he was accused of a vast overspend in his unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign. But these and other scandals are dwarfed by the Libyan campaign-finance saga: the charge that he sealed a corruption pact with the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to obtain millions of euros in cash for his 2007 presidential campaign.

He was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday for criminal conspiracy, but was cleared of all other charges in the case, including corruption. It looks likely that he will soon be swapping the comforts of home - where he lives with his third wife, model and singer-songwriter Carla Bruni-Sarkozy - for a prison cell.

"The story is so crazy and complicated that it was hard to believe," a French journalist who has followed the case told The Independent. “It’s a very serious case; there has been nothing else like this.”

Gaddafi had for years been an international pariah for sponsoring terrorist attacks, including the downing of a French DC-10 in Niger in 1989 with the loss of all 170 souls on board, 40 of whom were French. But after the September 11 attacks, the Libyan strongman made a sustained bid for international respectability.