nicolas sarkozy
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (/sɑːrˈkoʊzi/ sar-KOH-zee; French: [nikɔla pɔl stefan saʁkɔzi] ⓘ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician and convicted criminal who held office as President of France from 2007 to 2012. In 2021, he was convicted of having tried to bribe a judge in 2014 to obtain information and spent more than legal limits of campaign expenditures on his 2012 reelection campaign.[1][2] In September 2025 he was convicted of criminal conspiracy, relating to large "donations" received from Libya.[3]}
Born in Paris, his origins are 1/2 Hungarian Protestant, 1/4 Greek Jewish, and 1/4 French Catholic. Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine (1983-2002), he was Minister of the Budget of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur (1993–1995) under François Mitterrand's second term of office. In Jacques Chirac's second term of office, he served as Minister of the Interior and Minister of Finances. President of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party from 2004 to 2007.
He was democratically elected President of France during the 2007 presidential election with a 53.1% majority over Socialist Party (PS) candidate Ségolène Royal by a 46.9% majority. He faced the 2008 financial crisis, the late-2000s recession, and the European sovereign debt crisis, the Russo-Georgian War (for which he brokered a ceasefire), and the Arab Spring (specifically in Tunisia, Libya, and Syria). He introduced the reform of French universities (2007) and the pension reform (2010). In 2008, he married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni in Paris's Élysée Palace.
In the 2012 presidential election, Sarkozy lost to PS candidate François Hollande by a margin of 3.2%. Having retired from politics, Sarkozy vowed to retire from active life before coming back in 2014 and being re-elected as UMP leader (later renamed The Republicans in 2015). Losing the Republican presidential primary of 2016, he retired from active life.
He was indicted for corruption by French prosecutors twice, such as the alleged Libyan meddling in the 2007 French elections. Sarkozy was twice convicted of corruption in two different trials in 2021. He received a sentence of three years, two suspended and one in prison after his first conviction; he appealed the decision. He was sentenced for a term of one year for the second offense, to be served under home confinement. Sarkozy had an appeal of his corruption conviction denied in May 2023.[4] In February 2024, his one-year sentence for the campaign funding conviction was changed so that he would be imprisoned for six months and have the remaining six months suspended.[2] Sarkozy was convicted of criminal conspiracy for his "corruption pact" with Muammar Gaddafi in September 2025 and was sentenced to five years in prison, which, under a special court order, he is required to serve even if he appeals. He was further directed to pay a fine of €100,000
