"Their mentor, the late President Jacques Chirac, was found guilty after leaving office in 2011 of systematically cheating the Paris tax-payers to finance his political party and his career. He was given a two-year suspended jail sentence. All these men built their careers on the supposed traditional values of the Gaullist centre-right. All campaigned as warriors on crime and defenders of law and order."
"Sarkozy's first two convictions can perhaps be dismissed as political crimes without victims. He tried to bribe a judge for inside information and he organised fake companies to disguise illegal overspending on his 2012 presidential campaign. His conviction last week was for his part in a breathtakingly wicked crime: an attempt to finance his first presidential campaign in 2007 with cash from Muammar Gaddafi's pariah, terrorist regime in Libya."
Nicolas Sarkozy received his third conviction for corruption and an immediate jail sentence. Francois Fillon was convicted in 2022 for multiple small, self-enriching frauds and initially sentenced to one year in jail, later reduced on appeal to a four-year suspended sentence. Jacques Chirac was found guilty in 2011 of systematically cheating Paris taxpayers to fund his political party and career and received a two-year suspended sentence. All three men built careers on Gaullist centre-right values and law-and-order rhetoric while engaging in corrupt practices including bribery, fake companies to hide campaign overspending, and alleged illicit foreign financing.
Read at www.thelocal.fr
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