The judge said Sarkozy could serve the sentence by wearing an electronic bracelet at home. All 13 co-defendants have been found guilty. "Nicolas Sarkozy knew the spending limit," the judge said. "He knew he shouldn't exceed it."
First started in March 2014, the criminal investigation into what has been dubbed the "Bygmalion case," discovered that his campaign spent more than $54 million during campaign by using fake invoices, way above the limit of $24 million set by French electoral laws.
Sarkozy fought a lengthy legal battle trying to prevent the trial from happening but his appeal was rejected in late 2018 and the trial opened on May 20, 2021, after having been delayed for two months due to a key
defendant's lawyer being hospitalized for Covid-19.
The legal ceiling for campaign funds was a well-known fact within Sarkozy's campaign team. On March 7, 2012, they received their first memo from their accountants warning them of the quickly expanding campaign cost, urging them to "correct the trajectory," said Guillaume Lambert, Sarkozy's 2012 campaign manager.
Lambert said he told Sarkozy about the memo and indicated to him the necessity to cut campaign spending, while Sarkozy maintained that he had no knowledge of the overspending.
