A former Prime Minister of a first world country in jail is insane. He must have made a crime without the help of others because in political scandals usually a whole gang of public people is liable. Then you have to convict the monkey with the bananas and the whole tree.
If we follow the French justice, in my country (Greece) about 10% of people including almost all the politicians of the last decades should be in jail.
Imagine, a land full of mother sauces, divine cuisine and pastries, and a corrupt and sentenced felon actually facing (eventual) justice for the crimes they committed. This sounds like a magical land (all is relative).
In some ways, this reminds me of Bernard Tapie, called "a man with 1001 lives". It's a really interesting story from 1980s/90s of a self-made-businessman, turned politician, getting to the very top, doing deals with African leaders, becoming minister, having his football club (Marseille) win the European Champions League; which however was a turning point that started his downfall, as they bought a domestic game just before, to avoid injuries before the big final.
A very interesting documentary [2] explains all this. There's also Netflix series that I didn't watch though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Tapie
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_football_bribery_scanda...
[2] https://lcp.fr/programmes/les-mille-et-une-vies-de-bernard-t...
Fyi: Austria had a "tough on crime" minister of the interior who ended up in a jail he ceremoniously inaugurated himself.
"We put all our politicians in jail as soon as they're elected."
"Why?"
"It saves time."
> Sarkozy said he would take two books with him into prison, a life of Jesus by Jean-Christian Petitfils and the Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is a good choice.
For context, it's not even the first time he's condemned, but this time the crime was sever enough so he couldn't avoid prison.
He delayed the case enough (almost 13 years) so that he's now more than 70 though and I doubt he stays to long in prison because of his age.
But it's nice to see that he couldn't run away from justice forever and is finally in jail.
So is this a criminal president receiving justice, or a politically motivated prosecution?
There is no excuse for corruption. However, everyone in all countries should ask themselves whether or not most of the representatives in their congress/parliament would, if investigated, be found guilty of the same sort of corruption. Power corrupts.
oh I wish the American people were this brave
We, French, are very proud of having put an ex-President in jail, for his crimes of having tried to whitewash a dictator responsible for the death of more French people than the Bataclan terror attacks in exchange for money.
This person humiliated our country, and we're glad our justice put him behind bars
Why when a high profile politic is sentenced it goes to a 5 star suite while the rest of mortals are thrown to a hole?
It seems that when you cross a certain invisible threshold "justice" applies just a bit differently. Same in Argentina with corrupt and ex-robber Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
By the way, this is not possible in the U.S and in many other countries. When someone is convicted of a crime, they don’t usually start serving a prison sentence until the case is final. If they appeal, the sentence is automatically paused or can be stayed by the court. In practice, this means you don’t go to prison (unless you are already in preventive detention because of flight risk or danger) while your case is still being fought in higher courts.
Et la santé !
South korea and Brazil have already punished their criminal ex-prime ministers and ex-presidents. And, now France. It's high time the suit is followed here in US as well. The next right step at this point is to throw the clown behind the bars!! Serve the Justice!!!
Would he have gone to jail if the money had come from Zionists? Because that's how campaign finance currently works in the US.
So he used money from Libya to get elected and then later he bombed them?
This is slightly off-topic, but is it "jail" or "prison"? I see this switch all the time, and French does not make a difference. But, in English, and many other languages, jail is more specific than prison, and is usually for short term or pre-sentencing holding. If someone is sentenced, it's usually a different facility called "prison". Is BBC making a mistake, or are they actually saying Sarkozy will be held in in an actual jail?
Quite a shame it took this long
Gone are the days of the guillotine ...
What about Silvio Berlusconi? The Italian “premier”, multiple times prime minister, founder of multiple parties and leader of the right.
Owner of Milan FC and involved in constructing large parts of Milan city. Multiple people in his parties were condemned for corruption, the co-founder of his main party “Forza Italia” called Marcello Dell’Utri went in jail for concussion with Mafia. Berlusconi had a mafia boss - Vittorio Mangano - living permanently in his mansion near Milan. Owner of large construction companies, movie companies, a large bank, publishing companies, multiple newspapers, a lot of investments and three of the main TVs in Italy, and never went in jail a single day. He was able to create laws ad personam, like that the tree most important political positions in the country got immunity from law persecution, and he also was able to shorten the limitation period for crimes, in order to avoid charges.
He got sentenced or prosecuted for: fiscal fraud for his Mediaset TVs, underage prostitution, prostitution racket (some of the girls were appearing in TVs and got elected as politicians to get $$$ government pensions), mafia murders ‘92/93 (where Falcone e Borsellino died, the two judges that brought to international attention the danger of Italian Mafia), multiple accounting frauds, criminal appropriations, and corruption. He had few personal lawyers which the main one of them, Niccolò Ghedini, got elected in parliament.
When I read about Sarkozy or Trump, I think they’re just bad clones of Berlusconi. They read his manual. Congratulations to France to take politics and corruption more seriously then Italians.
P.S. Berlusconi was best friend with Putin and Gheddafi.
Broadly speaking, it's a good sign of a healthy democracy that wealthy, powerful people can sometimes still go to prison.
Interesting story but why is this on HN?
This is one of the greatest news I have heard of in the last 20 years or so.
More of that, please.
Politicians responsible for starting a war, bombing a country, causing a lot of our current issues (e.g., with illegal migration flows) for purely personal interests and nothing more than that should be in jail. He will not, of course, spend more than 3-4 weeks there, but who cares. Better than noting.
Also, the French people deserve better than this joke of a president.
Reassuring that there are still democracies where presidents who commit crimes go to jail instead of being allowed to continue committing crimes and pardoning other people who commit crimes.
The French understand how to run a society.
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Good. He took money from Gaddafi to finance his campaign and then aided killing him, throwing the country into a decade long civil war. How much more morally corrupt can one get?
I hope LePen goes to jail as well although it would be harder for the prosecutors to follow the money and convict her.
Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda.
Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. It's hard to imagine but non stop. You have everyday interviews of his family saying that it is an injustice, that he did nothing, that the judgement was rigged, that he was a great men that served France and so should not be treated like everyone else. Article about how sad the poor family is. Number of articles repeating friends of him verbatim s that the judgement was fake.
Almost none speaking about the facts, the grounds for his sentence, the big number of other trials against him that are running. And also the other definitive convictions he got. Like for attempting to bribe a head prosecutor to get insider info about his case. Using a prepaid line opened with a fake name...
But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.