Paris: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was given a one-year prison sentence by the Paris Court on Thursday after being found guilty of illegal campaign financing on a failed 2012 re-election offer.
Sarkozy, 66, could not have been prison.
He is expected to appeal, a step applied will suspend him, and the judge says he can serve punishment at home with electronic tags.
It was the second year’s guilty verdict for Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and maintained influence among conservatives despite falling from a grace over its legal issues.
His conservative party, said the prosecutor, said, spending almost twice the 22.5 million euros (currently $ 19.2 million) was permitted based on the election law on extraordinary campaign demonstrations and then hiring a friendly public relations agent to hide costs .
Sarkozy denied the mistake.
He told the court in June that he had not been involved in his campaign logistics for the second term as president or in the way money was spent during the election.
But the court said Sarkozy was aware of excessive expenditure, that he did not act on it, and that there was no need for him to approve every individual expenditure to be responsible.
Sarkozy was found guilty in separate trials in March trying to bribe the judge and peddle the influence to get confidential information about judicial investigations.
He also denied the mistake in that.
The former president was sentenced to three years in prison in the trial – two of them were suspended – but had not spent time in prison, while the appeal was waiting.