French prosecutors have demanded a seven-year prison sentence for former French president Nicolas Sarkozy in the appeal trial over the alleged Libyan financing of his successful 2007 election campaign.
At a hearing on May 13, 2026, the prosecution at the Paris Court of Appeal also asked the three judges to impose a €300,000 fine and a five-year ban on holding public office, French broadcaster BFM TV has reported.
Sarkozy, 71, was sentenced in September 2025 to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy in the same case, becoming the first modern French head of state to be jailed. He served 20 days at La Santé prison in Paris before being released in November pending his appeal.
The latest request matched the sentence sought by financial prosecutors at the first trial. They have asked the appeal judges to find Sarkozy guilty of corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealing the embezzlement of Libyan public funds — three charges of which he was acquitted at first instance.
At the heart of the case lay two secret meetings in late 2005 between Sarkozy’s close aides Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux and Abdallah Senoussi, brother-in-law and intelligence chief of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Senoussi had been sentenced in absentia by a French court in 1999 to life in prison for ordering the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772 over Niger, in which 170 people were killed, 54 of them French nationals.
According to the prosecution, Sarkozy’s camp pledged to look into Senoussi’s French conviction in exchange for campaign funds.
Speaking at the appeal hearing in April, Sarkozy rejected the accusations. “Why would I have chosen Mr Gaddafi, whom I had never met before, to set up a suspicious financing arrangement with him during a 30-minute meeting?” he asked the judges. “It makes no sense.”
“I owe the truth to the French people. I’m innocent,” he added, saying no Libyan money had reached his 2007 campaign.
His lawyer Christophe Ingrain told reporters after the May 13 hearing that the prosecution’s request was “strictly identical” to what financial prosecutors had unsuccessfully sought at the first trial. “Nicolas Sarkozy is innocent and we will demonstrate it in 15 days,” he said.
The appeal trial, which began in mid-March, was due to run until early June. A ruling has been scheduled for November 30, 2026. If convicted, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison and could only then appeal to the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court.
The right-wing politician led France from 2007 to 2012 and has faced a string of legal cases since leaving office. He has been definitively convicted in two other matters: a three-year term, with one year served under electronic monitoring, in the so-called Bismuth corruption and influence-peddling affair, and a one-year sentence over overspending on his failed 2012 re-election bid.
