Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy set to go on trial after ‘receiving millions from Colonel Gaddafi’

EX-FRENCH president Nicolas Sarkozy is to go on trial for a “corruption pact” over at least £42million he allegedly received from Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi.

The cash is said to have funded his election campaign in 2007.

Sarkozy faces allegations of “corruption, criminal association, the illegal financing of an election campaign and concealment of embezzled funds”.

The charges come after an investigation by French news outlet Mediapoint in 2012, with a trial set for 2025.

A dozen others, including ex-French ministers Eric Woerth and Brice Hortefeux, will also be in the dock.

Sarkozy, 68, is already facing an inquiry into a £2.7million payment from a Russian firm for “consultancy work” in 2019.

He has always denied any criminality.

In 2021, Sarkozy was found guilty of illegally funding his campaign for re-election and faced prison time.

The verdict handed down at the Paris Correctional Court followed a five-week trial during which prosecutors said the politician was guilty of fiddling the books during his unsuccessful 2012 bid to become head of state.

It followed Sarkozy already being given three years in jail for bribing a judge. 

Sarkozy's conservative predecessor as President of France, the late Jacques Chirac, received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption, but this related to his time as Mayor of Paris. 

The last French head of state to go to a prison cell was Marshall Philippe Pétain, the wartime Nazi collaborator

Gaddafi was hacked to death by a mob in 2011.