Sarkozy returns to court to appeal his 2021 conviction for corruption

MADRID, 5 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy went to the Paris Court of Appeal on Monday to defend his case after being sentenced to three years in prison for corruption and influence peddling in a wiretapping plot.

Along with his lawyer Thierry Herzog and former magistrate Gilbert Azibert, sentenced for the same case to similar penalties, the former French president has returned to court in a process that will last until December 16 and for which he will try to reverse his sentence.

"I come here to defend my honor, trampled under conditions that are not very credible," he said upon arrival, adding that he wants to convince the courts that he did "nothing," according to the Ouest France news portal.

Sarzoky was sentenced in March 2021 for crimes of corruption and influence peddling after the French Justice considered it proven that he used his position to try to obtain information about an investigation.

The Public Ministry accused Sarkozy of trying to obtain secret information from Herzog in 2014, for which he would have turned to Azibert, then in the Court of Cassation. According to the investigators, the former president offered Azibert a position in Monaco in exchange for information related to an open case for alleged irregular campaign financing.

The accusations are based on private telephone conversations between Sarkozy and Herzog. The former president, who denied that he had committed any irregularity, tried to knock down the recordings as valid evidence in the trial, since he defended that they were made illegally.

Sarkozy governed France between 2007 and 2012 and became the first former head of state to physically sit on the defendant's bench, since although in 2011 his predecessor at the Élysée, Jacques Chirac, was also sentenced to two years for crimes committed During his time as mayor of Paris, he never stepped foot in court for health reasons.