French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence
bbc.com
bbc.com
Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. It's hard to imagine but non stop. You have everyday interviews of his family saying that it is an injustice, that he did nothing, that the judgement was rigged, that he was a great men that served France and so should not be treated like everyone else. Article about how sad the poor family is. Number of articles repeating friends of him verbatim s that the judgement was fake.
Almost none speaking about the facts, the grounds for his sentence, the big number of other trials against him that are running. And also the other definitive convictions he got. Like for attempting to bribe a head prosecutor to get insider info about his case. Using a prepaid line opened with a fake name...
But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.
How much of this is driven by contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting?
I’m not familiar with French media, but I see the same pattern in every country where I’ve kept up with the news: Media starts being favorable to a topic when it’s up and coming, switching to being highly critical when that topic becomes mainstream, then reverts again to exploring the positives when the topic falls out of favor.
You see it even with people like Elizabeth Holmes. News stories about her fraud were everywhere until she had to go to jail, but now the news has swung to humanizing her, claiming her sentencing was excessive, focusing on the angle of a mother separated from her children, and confusingly ignoring her fraud at all.
It’s all designed to be counter-narrative and rise waves of controversy. The more controversial, the more shares and views.
The fact that a new publicist was hired by her before all the sympathetic press started coming out is enough for me to believe that there's a link there and not a natural news swing cycle.
https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people...
The craziest example for me was NYC congestion pricing. When it was about to happen, all the reporting was about all of the downsides of the tolls starting. A week after the New York Governor "indefinitely paused" congestion pricing, the reporting was all about the downsides of the tolls not starting.
Olivier Dassault turned it into one of the main supports of Nicolas Sarkozy starting 2005 or 2006 for his successful presidency campaign in 2007 until 2014.
After the Sarkozy and Hollande eras Valeurs Actuelles turned far-right. Eric Zemmour, a publicist-turned-politician, used to write for Valeurs Actuelles. It is financially in the hands of the French-Lebanese Safa family.
I used to read their monthly magazine "Le Spectacle du Monde" which was at the time much less political. It is now independent, headed by an elderly diplomat and collaborator to former president Jacques Chirac.
Ragrding Sarkozy, you also forgot his close relationships with the late Lagardère father (biggest French media mogul in the 1990s) and with André Bettencourt and his window (L'Oréal, richest person in France in the 2000s). Despite his being in jail, Sarkozy remains administrator of the Lagardère trust.
Is that like Lockheed Martin owning a major newspaper or GE owning a TV network?
You have editorial like "Sarkozy stays honorable and magnificent despite an illegal non proof based sentence" "His wife so sad that this hero of the nation that did so much, proud father, beloved by his friends, will have to live this hard experience" All days long.
A few examples just to give one newspaper: https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980589938941874341
Or "Sarkozy in jail, the fault of the justice!" https://x.com/Le_Figaro/status/1980567283157139926
And we now all know well what book "he will bring" to show how honorable is this man: "The count of Monte Cristo", "life of Jesus Christ", ...
I would agree with you if media didn't have a direction, but in many cases they do.
Enslaving our media to what triggers the cravings of the masses was probably one of the dumbest thing we did. And we owe it, like many other terrible things, to ad industry.
It's a parasite of the economy and cancer of society. Serves no useful purpose beyond what an open access database of all products and services could cheaply fulfill.
Most of French media, specially newspapers, are money sinks only surviving because they are useful to push the rent-seeking business or ideological agenda of their owners (Dassault, Bouygues, Lagardere, Arnault, Bettencourt, Saade, Pinault, Niel).
Also, just for context, Martin Bouygues, Bernard Arnault and Vincent Bollore, the respective owners of TF1 (main French TV channel), Le Parisien (major newspaper) and CNews/Europe1 (major TV channel & radio) are personal friends of Sarkozy (a la "witness at your wedding, god father of your son or let's celebrate your election on my yacht" kind of way).
The Figaro (main right-wing newspaper in France) and its owners, the Dassault family, are also not far away.
Seeing the Figaro website was actually quite funny. Because the evidences are so damming, their main page was textbook "how to propagate fake news with plausible deniability". It was mainly pro-Sarkozy Editorials/Tribunes from non-journalists people, articles titled with quotes from Sarkozy's supporters and the few articles actually on the case were about the side stories.
French press ownership map:
https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA#&gid=1&pid=1
There are only two truly independent major media left in France: Mediaparte (the ones we have to thanks for Sarkozy's well deserved condemnations) and Le Canard Enchaine (a bunch of scandals, but lately, the "Affaire Fillion").
The rest is either owned by billionaires, state run, or is far smaller and doesn't have the aura, size & credibility to reveal such scandals.
Much like a brushless motor controller, if you pull towards the direction the rotors already faces, it's uninteresting. But if you lead the momentum in a different direction...
At least in France he’ll serve a sentence- in the US we might have elected him again and let him make the charges go away.
1. They are the voice of a group of millions of people, and therefore a perception will exist that an attack on the politician is an attack on those people as well 2. Sure seems like a lot of them are compromised in some way, so any time one is targeted it will always seem selective in the moment
I don't know how much that intersects with what you're observing, and I don't really have easy answers.
Many people over 60 (i.e. the people who vote) watch nothing but.
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted for providing a link to a website and infographic shining light on the lack of independence in US media. That's HN for you.
The best way to notice this in yourself (I think) is if there are arguments for the other side of an issue that you simply avoid discussion of altogether. When they are brought up, you attack the source, personally attack the person repeating them, or refuse the discussion on some other terms. This is reflexively doing propaganda, on a small scale, but as a reaction to being cornered.
If you find yourself in this situation, resorting to repeating slogans you've heard rather than treating the argument exactly as you would treat an argument in an uncontroversial context, it's better to shut up, listen, and reflect.
The only moral position is to be a collection of any valid argument you can find, always trying to clarify their degree of soundness. Whenever you deviate from that, you're defying reason, and weakening civil society (which relies on secular protocols.)
If you consume propaganda with that mindset, you notice because it has very little useful content at all. It's astounding how long media can go on about a subject without saying anything, or making any coherent claim, and scary when you see people who seem to get something out of that avalanche and they can't quite explain how they got there. It's how Saddam did 9/11.
What I meant is that general media (either social or legacy) has often strong biases and narratives and at certain times it gets too much to the point of propaganda.
But, if you're not very intimate in some topic, or have not been part of the events it's not that obvious.
Few examples.
1. Almost a million people protested the war in Gaza few weeks ago here in Italy, in many cities, but if you turned on the tv (any channel really) or read the news this was skipped and instead the entirety of the focus was on few limited clashes with the entire narrative being built about how if you protest for Gaza you're automatically violent and antisemitic. Nonsense.
1.5 At an anti-Covid protest in Piazza San Giovanni, a place that comfortably holds half a million people, the place was ultra full, as packed as during concerts...But ask the police and the official numbers were below 10k. Ridiculous, it was at least 15 times as much. I wasn't part of the protests but lived nearby so I had a full account.
2. Around 15 years ago our main airline (Alitalia) was in terrible shape and Air France-KLM wanted to buy it out, pay the debts and retain most of the workforce. Non stop bombarding on every outlet about how we could not sell our main company, and that taxpayers would foot the bill. The bombarding went on with plenty of interviews of how Alitalia staff was in favor of this operation, but I had several friends working for the company and actually the opposite was true: most of them supported the merger rather than the bailout, but the propaganda did its best to silence these voices.
Again, how would you know about those things if you were not intimately knowledgeable about the topics?
I really don't have time to get knowledgeable and fact check or be part of every world, national and local event. Thus I'm not equipped with distinguishing a genuine fact based narrative from a biased one.
Assuming he's losing the appeal on this particular case, he will have been sentenced for scheming with a convicted murderer (Lockerbie amongst other things).
If convicted, that person will be guilty of criminal actions together with a foreign dictator and his terrorist in chief.
Not exactly stealing gums.
The case is of particular seriousness and he's a convicted person, repeat offender.
Would something as serious be put under the rug in other democracies? I'm not so sure. If Justin Trudeau is found accepting money from a bunch of Taliban involved in weapons trafficking, would the RCMP turn a blind eye?
(Why do I say "if convicted"? He appealed, so he is innocent until proven guilty. Why is he in jail? In large parts because his political party lobbied for this type of sentences. Leopards did eat his face)
RCMP turned a blind eye to multiple corruption scandals involving bribery, fraud, embezzlement of public funds, etc. under Trudeau and his government, and helped cover them up. That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corruption within the RCMP - there is a long list of nefarious and straight up illegal shit they have done over the years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Techno...
Faith based society is not just the domain of the religious. 1984 been the norm since well before Orwell wrote the book.
I mean he's going to jail. If anything that's better than most countries. In India, a chief minister who instigated racial riots never even had to go to court for it and he even became the current de facto autocrate
The incredible successes of Trumps second term so far will encourage and empower populists everywhere.
Was there ever a time or place where this was not true?
In Hungary and Poland, they are specific, time-bound events with important institutional implications and unique factual circumstances. "It's always been that way" is risky because it can be used to airbrush away specific moral urgency with vagueness and false equivalences, and even functions to apologize for active advancements of authoritarianism as they are happening in real time.
it should be repeated ad-nauseam that he is a crook, a shame for the country and its values and that the whole discourse about the injustice of the sentencing has heavy anti-liberal vibes
By 2024 they were 100% in lock-step with the party line that all cases were fake news lawfare (but wouldn't engage with detailed argument, of course) and in 2025 they are gaslighting me about ever having had those arguments at all. The only thing keeping me sane is the correspondence that I kept proving that our conversations weren't a product of my own fevered imagination.
> President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes.
For example reddit is consistently an echo chamber in the reverse direction. Another example is any clips selected by cable news are doubted by republicans for intentional malicious framing. Which is fair enough since I’ve seen plenty of intentionally obtuse takes of things said which are already unacceptable.
It's similar to the people who push against unionization for fear of being retaliated against, only to get capriciously laid off during the next cyclical downturn. Seek your justice now, as delay is a form of denial.
This part is especially fascinating because I have heard of, and even had, remarkably similar experiences. The only real thing is the perpetual now. It's not even that they aren't curious or aware of what they said previously, they even emphatically deny their own words.
I don't know if you remember when Ebola was a big news topic because there were two or three cases in the U.S., but I had a family member insisting it was "just the beginning" and was going to get worse. A year later he said there's "probably a lot of stuff happening that's not reported yet". Two years later he forgot he ever said it.
Tribal alignment. If the tribe had moved on from Trump and he had lost the election, your relatives would still be grounded in these conversations and reality.
Trump is still the leader of their party and cultural movement, They have zero incentive to acknowledge the truth if it conflicts with these loyalties. If anything, such an action would be dangerous and risk their standing within their tribe, So the loyalty test then becomes denying what's clear and obvious to prove you are still a loyal member.
Big head political pundits literally go on Fox News and blame a Democrat President for Epstein's death, and you have to tell them "Uh, no, Trump was president then, and it was his administration in control" and they have this insane double take look like they can't possibly remember that.
Blaming Obama for the Hurricane Katrina response wasn't a fluke.
My father is a general contractor and viscerally experienced Trump's first term stupidity tripling his material costs. He still voted for him again, as "good for the economy", or "the democrats have gone too far". He blames democrats for the regional grocery chain hiring gay people as managers, which is funny, because they hire those people because they are the right kind of MBA types. He literally can't recognize the problem when it's in his very face.
My father has never been outwardly sexist and always demonstrated respect for strong women and their ability to participate in normal society. He still was convinced by right wing media that he should be afraid of women in the cockpit.
The soybean farmers were fucked by Trump's first term, and he gave them over $10 billion dollars. They all voted for him again, and it happened the exact same way.
Like, at this point, how do you convince people who change their memory of reality to fit their ideology?
That these same candidates, when elected, haven’t even attempted such a thing, even when they have an aligned Congress, doesn’t seem to register at all. They hear their lying talking heads say it again the next time, and believe it whole-heartedly. It’s so weird. You’d think at some point they’d start to wonder why it never happened.
A nitpick of mine is how Trump having the documents wasn’t the case against him. The case against Trump was an obstruction case because he lied and concealed the documents from authorities, going so far as shuffling them between properties, having his lawyers give false statements, and defying subpoenas.
This differentiates Trumps document case from everyone else’s (ie Bidens); the right loves to use this as an example of DOJ weaponization when they couldn’t be more different.
It’s also a very dangerous precedent to bring criminal charges against the presumptive (and in hindsight, actual) winner of the at time forthcoming presidential election, even if some of the cases have merit. Regardless of the merit of the cases, it’s impossible for that scenario to not be at least partly politically motivated and to have the effect of trying to disenfranchise half the country.
No, if Joe Biden had the same facts against him the entire right wing -- including you -- would be eagerly prosecuting them and singing of the high-minded justice in doing so. Have you forgotten "lock her up!"?
"President is above the law" is a far more dangerous precedent to set, and "nominees are above the law" is out-of-this-word nuts.
For example: https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/international/110123/nic... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/france-investi...
A politician who is no longer able to exert influence going to prison isn't a big loss to them, in fact it's arguably a good outcome. They get to have had favors while Sarkozy was in office and an angry France now that's he's out.
That isn't a problem if the electorate aren't easily influenced.
I do not want to be all about doom and gloom but I do not think that there is any media on this planet that delivers factual information without lying (either directly or by omission) to shape the opinion. And no, having a narrative is not lying as long as all the facts are presented, which allows the reader to make their own judgement whether they are buying into the narrative or not. Unfortunately, today journalists/editors believe that they have to report in a specific way as otherwise the “fight” would be lost.
Not sure how much an impact what you describe is having.
I see non optional and IMO skewed reporting all the time, I'm not sure it is all directed by someone.
Clearly, all the right-wing papers that have traditionnaly supported him (Le Figaro, Match) and all the hard-right-wing papers (owned by Bolloré, Arnault, etc..) that have _personnal_ ties to him are playing their "opinion" part.
I don't think public media is defending him at all. Left or Center-left papers are not (obviously.)
The tie breaker would be: "what is TF1 20h saying" (this is, no matter what new media says, still the one thing that most people watch and treat as "the news") - and I don't think they have been "blatantly" defending him.
The only way the current wave of right-wing media ends if by finding a new way to fund media & making it impossible to concentrate in the ends of a few rich folks.
And good luck with that, folks don't want to pay for media.
Was this a regime similar to Putin's role in the FSB when he collected all the dirt on oligarchs until everyone was controllable?
The logical choice for a media agency would be to disassociate themselves from Sarkozy, not the other way round. There has to be something else at play here, and I'm assuming it's not financial control because Sarkozy's family should not have much influence left there, given that the Judicative rulings already are done.
I don't disagree with him going to jail: but it's one heck of a corrupt country where they all have their hands in the cookie jar.
Most french politicians who served at the EU, for example, have friends and family as "employees" on their payroll (well, on the EU citizens' payroll). Same at non-EU level: it's called "emplois fictifs" in french ("fictional jobs"). Soooo many stories about politicians at so many local, regional, national and supra-national levels engaging in "emplois fictifs".
So many mayors in France have dirty money on their hands. Where for example they block construction permits then, once joyfully greased with cash, allow the construction permits.
But Sarkozy was right-wing and the EU, and France in particular, is ultra left-wing. So it's good to put a right-wing president in jail.
Once again: I've got nothing against him going to jail. But we're talking about a country were judges are openly leftists. They're not impartial.
It's all rotten and disgusting.
And why do you think all the leftist french mainstream media root for right-wing Sarkozy? Because these media are at the hand of corrupt politicians who think a politician going to jail is a dangerous precedent. They're nearly all corrupt, so they're shitting their pants to see that even a president is sent to jail.
But yup: one politician in jail. Great. Only 9999 more to go. And corrupt judges.
There is a reason why administrations don't go after obvious, in-your-face crimes committed by previous administrations/politicians. They all hate each other, but they are also terrified that if they prosecute previous administrations (for legitimate crimes), they'll be the target when someone else is in power (even if they themselves didn't commit any crimes).
I suppose it might be easier to prevent misbehavior by highest officials of the land by having stricter scrutiny, laws etc than prosecuting them after the fact, but who watches the watchdogs? Who watches the judiciary? As an ordinary citizen, it is exhausting to just even follow the news.
And if it is this bad in democracies, imagine how it is like in countries like Russia.
Does that still even exist? The problem I see in politics is that everyone has their hand in the cookie jar to some degree.
You don't get into politics unless you already have your hand in there, or are given the option to prove yourself where moving up the ranks involves helping someone getting their hand in there, with the unspoken assumption that they'll return the favor. And of course once you're in and have your hand in there, why rock the boat and waste all that effort?
Lots of bureaucrats everywhere.
You sound like you actually don’t know much about France. For instance your accusations about left wing media rooting for Sarkozy has no foundation. The judges being biased toward left is groundless as well. Many left wing politicians have been condemned by French justice.
Which are the "leftist french mainstream media" rooting for Sarkozy ?
The "leftist french mainstream media" I can think of would be Libération, Le Monde, Le Nouvel Obs, France Inter...
Do you have a link to articles where any of those are "defending" Sarkozy, cause quite frankly I missed it.
Unlike someone else who is engaging in extreme corruption and is trampling the constitution of his country completely in the open and will likely never face any repercussions.
Maybe... if someone did prosecute him this whole thing could have been avoided?
If you're talking about Orange Man Bad then he was, in fact, prosecuted, and it was a political own-goal by the Dems. Complete and total waste of time and resources for short-term political gains that never actually materialized. And it discredited the institution of impeachment forever. Well done.
Not only is it a category error, it is undesireable. Let them fight it out in the special realm of politics and leave our legal systems alone so we can enjoy their benefits.
This is untrue anywhere that has the rule of law. (One can run a system where the law is secondary to politics. But it doesn't have the benefits of rule of law.)
> To preserve the law for the common stock, we can't use law against political figures without debasing the currency of law
The entire history of the rule of law runs in the opposite direction. Prosecuting current and former politicians strengthens the rule of law. What it weakens, temporarily, is stability. You need strong institutions to take on and survive prosecuting a former politican, particularly a former head of state.
> If the will of the people can be overruled by the shrewd use of legal challenges then you have a juristocracy, not a democracy
You have a republic. Pure democracy doesn't work.
> legal system can and will be abused when it is used politically
Which is exactly what shielding politicians from prosecution causes.
The Roman Republic had this flaw. One of the perks of magistracy was immunity from prosecution. This not only encouraged corruption, it incentivised lawbreaking during office for politcal advantage and ultimately led to the downfall of the Republic when expiring politicians chose violence over losing immunity.
Well yes. That's certainly the case when the system is deeply corrupt and only superficially democratic. They shouldn't be above the law nor their opponents should have the power to abuse it.
Then you don't have either rule of law or, very soon, a democracy. What is obeying the outcome of an election but a legal matter? What's to stop the head of state from simply wiring the contents of the Treasury to his personal bank account? Deciding he doesn't like the official residence and having it demolished to build a palace?
Say someone is legally elected president of France. They serve their 5 years term, doing their job. They get out of Elysée Palace, draw a gun and shoot a passer by. Do they get a free pass? Wouldn't that victim deserve justice?
That person, not a divine being, a mere mortal like the rest of us, has been convicted of serious offences. He is now serving his sentence as any other person would (well, not exactly, for instance he gets a clean solo room and 24/7 security detail).
If your point is "an elected head of state should not be prosecuted by a standard court of justice" (a point I still disagree with btw), the french judicial system got that covered with "cour de justice de la république".
For offenses committed while doing their jobs. Use your elected position as president to steal money? Cour de justice de la république it is. Not a walk in the park, judges & a "jury" of members of the Parliament. Aggravating circumstances (committing an offense while in an official capacity) means theoritically harsher sentences.
What he's been convicted for was as a private citizen. Standard judicial system. As should be, nothing naïve about this.
(Huge simplification of the french judicial system, the actual nature of his current legal status, etc as this case is utterly complex. Judge's ruling is over 400 pages long, and he's appealing, and he'll mostly spend a month in the lam and the rest under house arrest)
Sorry, why is this such a big deal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_during...
If we follow the French justice, in my country (Greece) about 10% of people including almost all the politicians of the last decades should be in jail.
And then there are the many other trials involving Sarkozy and those around him...
In Ireland, we prefer to just tie them up in tribunals for the rest of their lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey (PM til '92, under investigation from '97 to '06, at which point he died)
That's why he's so pissed he was send to prison during his appeal. He expected to slow that down too, and get to stay at home on account of his age should he lose his appeal.
If you want to read about it in english, mediapart (one of the leading investigative journal on that case) has translated many of its articles : https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/dossier/sarkozy-gadd...
I believe there is a complete recap somewhere but sadly can't find it
I miss my suburban home after a week there, every time.
A very interesting documentary [2] explains all this. There's also Netflix series that I didn't watch though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Tapie
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_football_bribery_scanda...
[2] https://lcp.fr/programmes/les-mille-et-une-vies-de-bernard-t...
edit: Ah right, there was Strasser. The Schüssel government sure was great.
"Why?"
"It saves time."
The Count of Monte Cristo is a good choice.
It’s just a not so subtle way to claim he’s innocent and that he’ll get his revenge.
So there's something there for everyone I guess.
He delayed the case enough (almost 13 years) so that he's now more than 70 though and I doubt he stays to long in prison because of his age.
But it's nice to see that he couldn't run away from justice forever and is finally in jail.
On the other hand, condemned is specifically about being sentenced to death -or sometimes life in prison or some similarly hard punishment-. Which is also why a building is said to be condemned when it is set to be demolished.
The general difference is that "convicted" is neutral in tone. "Condemned" includes a particular tone, and religious and moral connotations, which might be unfitting in some cases.
Edit: Take the above with some grain of salt, might be at least incomplete, maybe somewhat wrong. After consulting the internet, I've found out that there are even more meanings and nuances, which I didn't know about. Sorry for being an arrogant non-native-speaker trying to score internet points ;)
His case is going to appeal but the court decided to still jail him now "provisionally" (exécution provisoire), which sounds like a political play. Coincidentally, the same is happening to Le Pen with respect to the decision to ban her from elections...
As for "delaying" the case, this is just the French court system for you. Everything takes years and years.
Let's put things straight, both of them are criminals, giving them a treatment of favor would be insane.
And to show how morally corrupted they are, both of them have been really loud about a no tolerance justice system. I guess that speaks for itself.
He should definitely be in jail, as some of the things he's been charged with, and also in other cases sentenced for, were conspiracies to rig his trials and attempts to lean on witnesses, in cases including, but not limited to, this very trial [1]. Him being behind bars is necessary to stop his attempts to rig his own trial.
The "exécution provisoire" is a measure that was introduced when his own party was in power, to make sure that terrorists were jailed immediately. He happened to be condemned for breaching the same law (association de malfaiteurs) that is used against terrorists.
I once read a comment by a lawyer that he was amazed by the number of politicians who ended up being caught by laws they had voted for. This is what happened here.
In fact when he was president he implemented another law, on minimum mandatory sanctions for repeated offenders (peines plancher) which was repelled by the subsequent administration. He would have been caught by that too otherwise.
No. That’s how it’s done, and he can thank himself because he introduced the process himself. It’s utterly disgusting to hear him bloviating about criminals in 2007 and now whining because he’s on the receiving end. Shameless.
The law is the law. He’s been convicted enough and he belongs in jail.
Is there a country for which that doesn't hold true?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_financing_in_the_2007_F...
First, this is mostly about things that happened before his election.
The tribunal ruled he did not personally benefit, and he did not directly solicit money to finance his campaign either.
However, some of his closest allies (who would become his ministers later) did the latter. The tribunal could not find any direct proof he was involved but ruled there were enough "converging indications" that he knew and did nothing to stop it.
The brother in law personally orchestrated the crashe of a civilian airliner, killing 170 passengers
There's been bags of cash that transited by private airplanes, terrorist acts in reprisal, and ultimately a probable demise of Gaddafi's regime in response.
Some real dirty actions with lots of lives lost.
Formal proofs of this illegal financing have been linked to two of his closest collaborators but not him directly. He is so convicted for "association de malfaiteurs" wich mean "partnership with criminals / wrongdoers".
The illegal financing also explains what the US call the "Sarkozy war", which what a very odd move from France.
Note that, despite the formal proofs of the wrong doing, Sarkozy has the support of most major medias AND from the current president Macron which is not exactly the same party as Sarkozy (but close enough). That suggests politically motivated prosecution is very unlikely.
The current sentence is for the illegal financing of his presidential campaign to the tune of 50 million euro, which is well above the legal cost cap. Although the amounts are benign compared to the amount of bribery seen in the US presidential runs, it is still unfair democratically and should be punished harshly accordingly. Interestingly, this case isn't motivated by financial greed, as in bribery for his own financial interests, but by power, i.e., help win the presidential election.
It should be noted that most of the bigger parties are known to have "alternative" accounting tricks so you can be certain that they also don't fully respect the funding cap, but they probably get away with differences (that we know of/suspect) of a few (tens of?) percent.
Sarkozy was not only well, well above that, with order O(200%), it was also done with money coming from a known dictator: Gaddafi. This brings a lot of interesting additional ethical questions to the table. Such as: what was the quid pro quo expected from such a payment? Or: what role did it play in Sarkozy ordering the bombing of Libya?
It could also be considered politically motivated in the sense that the judges themselves are not a-political (and it's fully in their rights to have a political opinion) and that some of the high-profile cases in the past have been handled by judges of a different political leaning. And without putting the impartiality of the justice system into doubt, some questions have been raised when some of the judges were a bit too vocal in the criticism of their political opponents.
And in parallel, although the judiciary system in France theoretically acts independently from the executive branch, the zones of influence are a bit murky and there are some indirect ways through which some pressure can be exerted onto the judges to facilitate, or in other cases slow down some cases.
So you could be certain that such a high-profile case was not done without the go-ahead of the executive. In that sense, it can be considered politically motivated.
Which doesn't mean Sarkozy shouldn't go to prison. He absolutely should. But please also clean-up all the other crooks, and go strongly after those that enriched themselves at the cost of the country. There are plenty of them, with lots of low-hanging fruit.
Not really. It is more complex than that.
There is two systems within the system for the "penal" (judiciary) in France:
- Le parquet, with a "procureur" who indirectly under the influence of the executive power.
- The "Juge d'Instruction". They are independent judges called only for complex affairs that are in charge of proof gathering and with more or less free hands.
Sarkozy affairs landed in the second system.
Politicans tend to hate the second systems for obvious reasons.
It is worth to notice that Sarkozy himself tried to reform the system and remove the "Juge d'instruction" entirely but ultimately failed.
But it is also clear that judges (who are notable left-leaning, if not far-left) are much more efficient at prosecuting right-wing figures (Fillon, for 0 reason this time).
This blend of comments strike me as odd. Are you actually complaining that a judicial system is too efficient at catching corruption at high levels? Is this bad? What point are you trying to make, exactly?
Even if indeed guilty, things like jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations despite the very black and white comments here...
I read it the other way around. You're arguing for preferencial treatment on the ground that any inconvenience could be misconstrued as politically motivated.
In the meantime you're seeing a case involving organized crime, lieutenants caught red-handed, and charges extended to the leader of the criminal enterprise. You're not seeing any doubt being raised on the charges, only on whether the politician could have political opponents.
It really is not. Nobody is benefitting from this politically, and the facts are difficult to ignore.
> jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations depiste the very black and white comments her
It’s just how it’s done in cases like this, and he can thank himself for having normalised it.
But now he is also the subject of his own policies and it does not like that. Looks like justice is ok just when it is not affecting him personally.
His attitude is totally disgusting and indecent.
Speaking as someone who isn't french,
If Sarkozy received the same funding from Obama it would have beem extremely shady.
From Gaddafi it sounds outright treacherous.
This person humiliated our country, and we're glad our justice put him behind bars
Karine Le Marchand expressing her support is one thing, identifiyng herself as being part of the same caste as Sarkozy, but seeing the same support from regular folks, who have most certainly been screwed over by the ex-President...
Here's a weird observation. I know the names of several US supreme court judges, and their right/left lean, despite never having lived there. I've lived in four other countries, and I might know one judge due to him having a funny name.
What also doesn't tend to happen in Europe is questioning the legitimacy of the system. People can get sentenced and they just... accept it.
German constitutional law is also politicized, but it has good reason to be against Nazim coming back.
Nah that's horse shit. Trump has been trying to ride outright populism since Ross Perot showed you could be a moron with no experience and people would still insist you were somehow a genius because you had a million dollars.
Trump's first campaign was nothing more than the republican party being utterly ravenous to demonstrate the hatred that AM radio and Fox News had been cooking up for a generation.
The tea party movement was not organic, it was invented and astroturfed into existence. The outcome was not planned, but it was entirely intentional.
Trump was the biggest source for the birtherism bullshit remember?
The people who believe haitian immigrants eat dogs, that portland is currently on fire, or that Mr "grab them by the pussy, they let you do it" and "I used to watch all the ms teen USA girls change" is somehow not the primary pedophile problem were never serious about justice, never cared about it being applied equally, and will never be satisfied with an actual fair justice system. They believe that crime is at an all time high despite no evidence. They believe the man that has quite literally scammed them time and time again is a "great businessman" or knows what he is doing at all.
The people who say "Obamacare is the worst thing" and yet "Don't you dare take away my ACA coverage" at the same time do not care about justice.
These people keep electing Republicans despite mountains of objective evidence that Republicans nearly alone are responsible for America's current budget and debt problems.
A lot of these people are utterly furious that the Federal Government forced them to treat black people like people in the 60s and have been holding a grudge ever since. You don't scrub rainbows off of cross walks because you are upset about justice.
The people cheering on the black bagging of American citizens and hate fueled oppression and the literal suppression of free expression or thought do not care about justice
The people who were upset by the injustice of 2008 were the Occupy movement. Where are their political candidates?
The documentary The Bibi Files was a particularly interesting examination of the allegations against him and his almost shrugging response to them [0]. And going back to America, a week ago Trump asked the Israeli president to preemptively pardon Netanyahu during his speech at their parliament [1], which I find to be concerning on all possible levels.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33338697/
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-urges-israel...
Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is determined by trial in an open court where defendent has the right to cross examine witnesses and present evidence. Do not assume guilt or innocence based on heavily politisized reporting.
For anyone who is not following the trial, Netanyahu was charged with bribery and a few lesser charges which do not have a direct US equivalents. As soon as the prosecution's case-in-chief was over, the judges publicly notified the prosecution that they should drop the bribery charges as they are unlikely to be able to prove them.
The prosecution case for briberty was built on a hypothesized meeting in which Netanyahu supposedely instructed the director general of the ministry of communications to serve the interests of Elovitch.
During cross examination, the defense managed to prove conclusively that such a meeting, as described, could not have occurred. They also showed that the prosecution had in its possession all the necssary evidence to show such a meeting could not have occurred.
https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/local/409910/ (use Google Translate)
No offense but the french people should thank god their criminal in control didn't go all the way through turning the country into a shit show in the process.
As I said before I believe we live in a global time in which countries must embrace the rule of law systematically in order to survive as democracies. Otherwise you just get a kleptocracy with extra steps, just like in the US, some of Europe and Russia.
How about it if by a fuller acceptance that power corrupts, we have the head of government only serve for one term and automatically be taken to (actual) prison once their time is done. They would then have an expedited trial by a socioeconomically diverse jury representing the population, judge their overreach in different areas, and how long of a sentence they should be given; at best, they would be released after a month or two for time served. Afterwards, unless this has been explicitly revoked from them due to gross misconduct, the former head of government would be given a sufficiently generous stipend to live and travel without ever needing to work again, and encouraged to spend the rest of their lives on charitable pursuits.
The big risk I see here is that by stripping some of the long-term power from the head of government, it would lead to a re-concentration of powers in a head of party role, or other behind-the-scenes power brokers, but the intent here is that the head of government once elected is explicitly given the ability to overreach, and particularly knowing that they'll be set for life, they'll have the freedom to act independently, in what hopefully would be their take on the country's best interests, and a desire to leave a positive legacy. And furthermore, I think that restricting the ascension to power to those who are willing to take on that prison time would attract people who are a bit less vain than the typical crop of candidates, and at the same time reduce the stigma of prison in general, and hopefully lead to political interest in improving prison conditions.
Putting an active president in jail was not something the country wanted to risk, I'm not convinced prior Supreme Courts would have agreed to that either in other situations. If Trump did not win the election he would have faced serious consequences, beyond the millions of dollars he already owes from other trials.
Sarkozy is easier to put in jail because he's not in power.
We just still have a working judiciary system. But for how long? It barely correctly financed and his independence his attacked every days in the oligarchy controlled medias.
I hope you fix your judiciary system one day.
Fortunately he failed to do it when he was in power, and this is in my opinion a big factor in his current demise.
It seems that when you cross a certain invisible threshold "justice" applies just a bit differently. Same in Argentina with corrupt and ex-robber Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
In Argentina the lives of people of an entire country have been ruined because of the last 20 years of robbery from the state arcs.
Yet every disgusting politician is out there or has served a laughable sentence. And what do you get in turn after ripping off a country? A home prision benefit.
85% of prison sentences of more than two years also carry “exécution provisoire”: https://www.justice.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/migrations/p... (page 2). Sentences of more than 2 years are not the norm though.
> He will most likely ask the courts to review the execution of the sentence until the appeal in the next few days.
He already did.
He is jailed in a jail nicknamed "La Santé", which is also the the french cheers sentence. "À la votre *et la santé".
Will be the running gag of this christmas and new year.
Additionally budget for political campaigns are strictly regulated in France. And getting bribes from foreign dictator is, of course, not allowed.
The reason he did not get condemned also for that is that the judge could not proove the usage of the money.
Couldn't he setup some crypto fund instead? Or investment in ballroom? Or simply just receive present, let say plane, instead of money? Would that help him in this case?
He probably thought he could get away with it. But make no mistake this is a political play and everyone involved is as dirty as the Paris Seine.
Maybe the Seine was heavily covered as dirty by the media but remember that you shouldn't swim in the San Francisco bay either. Wait for the next JO to hear about water quality problem with the LA beach area under rain.
The solitary confinement part is quite harsh, I've never understood how that is supposed to rehabilitate someone.
In France there's early release, parole, etc. so real time he spends behind bars might be as low as two years.
Edit: The WP article is actually a very interesting read, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_financing_in_the_2007_F...
In this case it's for his own wellbeing, because it's probably difficult for a former president to go along well with the rest of the prison population. I also read a statement that it would help prevent other inmates taking and publicly sharing pictures of him (since some inmates do manage to have phones even if they are forbidden).
Prison in general is one of the worst ways to rehabilitate someone though, I do agree with you.
The court couldn't prove beyond reasonable doubt that the money was used for his campaign.
However they were able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he knew what his subordinates were planing and that he did nothing to stop it.
In France conspiring to commit a crime is punishable, regardless of whether the crime actually happened or not. That's a law that has been crafted by Sarkozy's own party.
> The solitary confinement part is quite harsh
The solitary part isn't a punishment, but to ensure his safety. They even went as far as to allocated another cell for the two full time police officers of his security detail...
Also the upside is that he has a cell for himself, something a lot of prisoners would love to have given the over prison occupancy in France is 137% (and up to 200% in some specific prisons).
I would be wary of going through the appeal court. The judges motivation make it quite clear they were _extremely_ lenient and chose to ignore how contradictory a lot of statement were, and the other cases linked to this. If he is convicted for "subordination de temoin" in the related case, it is likely that his sentence would be set to a longer time.
The fact that Sarkozy started the Lybian war was also outside of the scope of the trial, sadly.
It's about making sure crimes have consequences, however highly placed you and your friends are.
As the most serious cases at the national level are often tried in Paris, the high-security wing is filled with drug traffickers, murderers and terrorists, at least for the duration of the proceedings, which can take years in France.
Sarkozy is in the VIP wing with two bodyguards nearby. These are hardly the conditions one would imagine for isolation.
It’s for security reasons. It’s also why he’s got bodyguards.
I believe only the US has a strong distinction between Prison and Jail.
for those who don't watch videos:
you go to jail if a cop doesn't like you. you can only go to prison if you're poor.
The BBC article is using the two terms interchangably. Very few readers are concerned about the distinction you are making.
This is by design and not an unintended consequence.
Justice in this country is only served thanks to the incredible determination of the members of the judiciary.
I hope LePen goes to jail as well although it would be harder for the prosecutors to follow the money and convict her.
Owner of Milan FC and involved in constructing large parts of Milan city. Multiple people in his parties were condemned for corruption, the co-founder of his main party “Forza Italia” called Marcello Dell’Utri went in jail for concussion with Mafia. Berlusconi had a mafia boss - Vittorio Mangano - living permanently in his mansion near Milan. Owner of large construction companies, movie companies, a large bank, publishing companies, multiple newspapers, a lot of investments and three of the main TVs in Italy, and never went in jail a single day. He was able to create laws ad personam, like that the tree most important political positions in the country got immunity from law persecution, and he also was able to shorten the limitation period for crimes, in order to avoid charges.
He got sentenced or prosecuted for: fiscal fraud for his Mediaset TVs, underage prostitution, prostitution racket (some of the girls were appearing in TVs and got elected as politicians to get $$$ government pensions), mafia murders ‘92/93 (where Falcone e Borsellino died, the two judges that brought to international attention the danger of Italian Mafia), multiple accounting frauds, criminal appropriations, and corruption. He had few personal lawyers which the main one of them, Niccolò Ghedini, got elected in parliament.
When I read about Sarkozy or Trump, I think they’re just bad clones of Berlusconi. They read his manual. Congratulations to France to take politics and corruption more seriously then Italians.
P.S. Berlusconi was best friend with Putin and Gheddafi.
- Prosecuting white-collar crime still takes ages and takes over a decade, long after the resulting sentences have a real impact
- People like Nicolas Sarkozy have powerful media relays (most of the TV/newspaper owners in France are friends of him or at least sympathetic) and they can smear the judgment, smear the judges in the media with impunity
- His allies are currently in power, he was invited for a short discussion by president Macron and got a visit in prison from the minister of justice Darmanin, which reeks of favoritism
So the road ahead is still long, and I'm not even talking about current political climate which is horrendous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_and_gov...
Norman Saunders: Saunders was alleged by the US Drug Enforcement Administration to have accepted $30,000 from undercover agents to ensure safe passage of drugs by permitting safe stopover refuelling of drug flights from Colombia to the United States. Video evidence showed Saunders accepting $20,000 from an agent. Saunders was convicted in July 1985 of conspiracy, though he was acquitted of the charge of conspiring to import drugs into the United States. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined $50,000.
Then he went on to get re-elected. And then had an airport named in his honour. Nuts.
I would say that when it comes to political dysfunction, France is a fairly bad case. The Gaullist semipresidential system was a mistake. IIRC only Erdogan copied it.
More of that, please.
Politicians responsible for starting a war, bombing a country, causing a lot of our current issues (e.g., with illegal migration flows) for purely personal interests and nothing more than that should be in jail. He will not, of course, spend more than 3-4 weeks there, but who cares. Better than noting.
Also, the French people deserve better than this joke of a president.
Two wings, two different moods, one prison.
Unfortunately, the trend for more rule based order has reversed. European governments are all struggling when the "who cares about rules" governments are full steam ahead. Even if they have net negative approval, they have plenty of fanatical supporters, they hold full narrative control through the media which is owned by their super rich allies. Oh and by the way this is happening because the "rule based world" folks screwed up and weren't fair either.
It's going to be worse before it gets better. The west is going through a phase and all I hope is that would be too destructive. Thankfully, the world isn't made just from "the west", so I guess its not the end for the humanity - yet.
I imagine in the latter form, it's easier to get big boys in jail, because simply being defeated once doesn't weaken all future attempts. I could be completely misremembering though.