International media reported on Wednesday, February 14, that the Paris Court of Appeal sentenced Nicolas Sarkozy on appeal to one year in prison, including six months suspended in the Bygmalion case, in the Bygmalion case on the excessive spending of his lost presidential campaign in 2012.

The Court upheld the first-instance judgment in 2021, declaring Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of illegal campaign financing. He was convicted of illegal campaign financing, for having let the accounts slip away despite alerts from accountants. The legal ceiling had been largely pulverized. The investigation revealed a system of false invoices to hide the explosion in spending, by blaming the UMP (now Les Républicains) for a large part of the costs of meetings, on the grounds of fictitious conventions

His lawyer pleaded for his release, assuring that the ex-head of state had “never been aware of an overrun” of the legal ceiling on election expenses and “never incurred expenses”. He considered that it had been “impossible” for the public prosecutor to “demonstrate the intentional element” or the “material element” of the alleged offence