A court in Paris on Thursday found Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France, guilty of a criminal conspiracy to seek funding for his 2007 campaign from the government of the onetime Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The court sentenced Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative politician who led France from 2007 to 2012, to five years in prison and ruled that the incarceration would be enforced in the coming weeks regardless of an appeal — a harsh sentence that is unprecedented in modern French history for a former president.
“If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison, but with my head high,” Mr. Sarkozy, looking grim and flanked by his lawyers and his wife, told reporters at the courthouse.
Mr. Sarkozy, who repeatedly denied any wrongdoing during the three-month trial this year, called the ruling a “scandal” and said that he would challenge it.
“Those who hate me so much think that they are humiliating me,” he said. But, he added, “those they have humiliated are France and its image.”
The ruling, which elicited gasps from some in the courtroom, was perhaps the most severe and most damaging blow to Mr. Sarkozy’s legacy.
It was not his first conviction, nor even his first prison sentence — since leaving office, he has already been found guilty of corruption, influence peddling and campaign spending violations in separate cases. He has also been stripped of France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honor.
Until now, though, through appeals and other means, he had remained free, and while he no longer holds any public office, he is a well-regarded figure on the right who retains some political influence.
But on Thursday, for the first time, it suddenly became likely that Mr. Sarkozy, now 70, would spend some time in prison, if not the full five years — a humiliating outcome for a man who rose to power in part on the image of a tough-talking, crime-battling politician.
Since 1945, only one other former French head of state had been found guilty by a court of law: Jacques Chirac, who was convicted in 2011 of misusing public funds when he was mayor of Paris.
But no former president has ever spent time behind bars.
Prosecutors had accused Mr. Sarkozy of being a central figure in a “Faustian corruption pact” with Libyan officials to funnel money to his 2007 campaign through bank and cash transfers, offshore accounts, and sham transactions.
In return, prosecutors said, Libya wanted economic deals, diplomatic recognition and possibly assistance from France in rescinding an arrest warrant against a top Libyan official who was wanted for the bombing of a French airliner in 1989 that killed 171 people.
Top aides to Mr. Sarkozy made several trips to Libya from 2005 to 2007, when he was interior minister — a time when the Qaddafi government was trying to shed its pariah status — and met with top Libyan officials. Two of those aides, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, were also convicted of criminal conspiracy.
The court said that Mr. Sarkozy and his aides had conspired to solicit funds — which is enough under French law to secure a conspiracy conviction — but said that it had found insufficient evidence that such funds had actually landed in the campaign’s coffers.
Nathalie Gavarino, the presiding judge, said as she read out the court’s 400-page ruling that Mr. Sarkozy had allowed top aides who worked under his authority and “acted in his name” to “obtain or try to obtain” funding from Libya.
Ms. Gavarino said that there was evidence that Libyan funds had transited to France in 2006 but that the path they took was “opaque” and that the court had seen no firm proof they had been used in Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign. The court also said that there was no evidence of a deal’s having been struck directly between Mr. Sarkozy and Colonel el-Qaddafi, who was killed during an uprising in 2011.
To that end, Mr. Sarkozy was cleared on charges of illegal campaign financing; concealing the misappropriation of public funds; and passive corruption, which refers to receiving money or favors.
But Ms. Gavarino said that there was nevertheless enough evidence that Mr. Sarkozy and several of his aides had conspired to engage in “corruption at the highest possible level” — an “extremely serious” act that she said was likely to “undermine citizens’ confidence in those who represent them.”
“These facts make it necessary to impose a prison sentence,” she said, though the court imposed slightly less than the seven years that prosecutors had sought.
The verdict capped a sprawling case that stretched over a decade with twists and turns. Just days before the decision, one of the defendants in the case, Ziad Takieddine, a French Lebanese businessman who said he had personally delivered millions for Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign, died of a heart attack.
In 2023, Mr. Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation on charges of benefiting from witness tampering after accusations that his allies had pressured Mr. Takieddine to retract his claims.
Mr. Sarkozy had strenuously denied any corruption pact, arguing that the accusations were driven mostly by allies of Colonel el-Qaddafi seeking revenge. Under Mr. Sarkozy’s leadership, France played a prominent role in the NATO-led campaign of airstrikes that ultimately led to the toppling of Colonel el-Qaddafi and his death at the hands of Libyan rebels.
Mr. Sarkozy’s legal team also noted that the investigation, which started in 2013, had found no conclusive evidence that Libya had sent millions, as some former Libyan officials had claimed.
It was not Mr. Sarkozy’s first conviction.
In 2021, he was found guilty of trying to obtain information from a judge about a court case against him, a ruling that was upheld on appeal. He was sentenced to one year under a form of house arrest with an electronic bracelet, which he wore for several months but was able to remove this year after he turned 70. At that age, France allows convicts to request conditional parole.
He was also convicted in 2021 on charges of illegally financing his unsuccessful 2012 re-election campaign, which wildly exceeded France’s spending limits. That case is still going through the appeals process.
Sandra Cossart, the head of Sherpa, an advocacy group that combats corruption and that was one of the plaintiffs in the case, hailed the verdict on Thursday as severe but fair. She noted that France had historically been lenient toward white-collar crime.
“It’s a historic decision,” Ms. Cossart said. “I hope it marks the end of a certain way of doing politics.”
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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