Former President of France from 2007 to 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy has had his Legion d’honneur award revoked after losing his appeal against a corruption conviction and a three-year prison sentence.
He could wear an electronic ankle bracelet instead of being imprisoned, officials say.
He has worn it for a year and has had it removed now.
Last year, Sarkozy was convicted of graft — he was found guilty of trying to secure favors from a judge illegally.
But he is currently appealing the conviction at the European Court of Human Rights while also being tried in a separate case on charges of accepting illegal campaign financing (we’re talking millions) from Gadaffi.
Sarkozy was convicted in 2021 for corruption and influence peddling: specifically, bribing a judge in exchange for information about a probe into alleged financial impropriety in his party. Two years of this sentencing were suspended, hence the ankle bracelet.
He denies the charges for these profound corruption affairs and face seven years in prison if found guilty come September.
This makes him the second French president to be removed from the award after Philippe Petain, who headed the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II and was convicted in August 1945 for high treason and conspiring with the Nazi occupiers.
The Legion d’honneur is France’s highest order of both civil and military merit and was established by Napoleon.
Current president Emmanuel Macron’s plea that “former presidents be respected” fell on deaf ears — because under the award’s rules, recipients automatically lose the award if they are convicted of a crime or receive a prison sentence of at least one year.
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