Former top-level state representatives, “acts of the utmost seriousness” and a series of judicial punishments: by sentencing Nicolas Sarkozy and his former right-hand men Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux on Thursday - alongside their accomplices Alexandre Djouhri, Wahib Nacer, Khalid Bugshan and Bashir Saleh – the Paris courts brought into the open practices that are unacceptable in a state operating under the rule of law. Practices which came close to staying buried in the dark recesses of the Republic.
The punishments match the crimes: the former head of state was sentenced to five years in prison, with an order to start his jail term deferred to a later date, as the instigator of a “criminal conspiracy” whose aim “was to establish corruption at the highest possible elected level”. Nicolas Sarkozy's former chief of staff, Claude Guéant was given a six-year prison term, in particular for having “sought funds abroad” in the context of the 2007 presidential campaign; and the ex-president's close aide and former minister Brice Hortefeux was handed two years in prison, among other things for having “agreed to meet [Libyan official] Abdullah Senussi”, even though he had been “convicted of terrorism”.
At last! It has taken a huge effort to arrive at the judicial truth, in parallel with the steady accumulation of journalistic facts. The first revelations by Mediapart on the affair date back to the summer of 2011. A few months earlier, our reporters Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske had got hold of documents that were as explosive as they were untapped. They did not know then that this was just the first piece in a puzzle that would take them 14 years to put together.
Bit by bit, the picture of one of the biggest scandals of the Fifth Republic has come into view. And against all the odds, too: rarely has the political and media pressure been as intense as for this investigation with its international ramifications, and it stands as a symbol of what independent journalism, independent of all governments and public authorities, can achieve. And this was despite the fact that the justice system itself was quick to pick up on our findings.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
It was indeed after the publication of articles raising the idea that Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign had been funded by dictator Muammar Gaddafi's regime that the French prosecution service decided to open a preliminary investigation in April 2013. Between 2016 and 2018, the judicial work gathered pace: questioning and searches multiplied both in France and abroad.
Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under investigation for the first time in March 2018 for corruption, illegal funding of an election campaign and receipt of misappropriated public funds; and then again in 2020 for criminal conspiracy. After ten years of judicial inquiry, the investigation was completed in the summer of 2023. This led, in January 2025, to an extraordinary trial amid demands by the financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet National Financier (PNF), for the court to hand down extremely tough sentences.
An offence against the people
The Paris court’s verdict on September 25th crowned this painstaking labour. The judgement it gave is even braver when one considers that France has a justifiably poor reputation when it comes to fighting corruption. Political, economic and media interests are historically so strong that they conceal their crimes more successfully here than in most other Western democracies.
Corruption is nonetheless “all our business”, to borrow the name of that association fighting against the climate crisis. By twisting the law for the benefit of his political family, Nicolas Sarkozy broke the bond of trust between the governing and the governed. By weakening democracy, he harmed all citizens.
But many remain unaware of such corruption, as every effort is made to conceal it.
The victims are often hard to spot. In the case of the Libyan affair, the civil parties were indeed physically present: both the families of the victims of the UTA DC-10 bombing, whose “mastermind”, Abdullah Senussi, was at the heart of the Franco-Libyan corruption pact cited by the judges, and the anti-corruption groups who, as Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for the association Sherpa, put it in court, embodied the “civic impulse from civil society ”.
Strong political and economic interests
On top of this, the majority of political leaders close ranks to shield their peers. In a regime in crisis, marked by an ever more toxic presidential style, few politicians have stepped forward since our initial revelations to relay our findings. While they do not hold back from (rightly) denouncing certain forms of corruption, linked for example to drug trafficking, more often than not they prefer to stifle cases that concern one of their own.
Even if the sentence handed down to him outstrips all other ones, Nicolas Sarkozy's conviction is not an isolated case. At the highest levels of the state, former president Jacques Chirac, ex-prime ministers Alain Juppé and François Fillon, and budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, among others, were also convicted over breaches of probity or for tax fraud. “Justice is at the heart of the project we put forward, because impropriety and privilege have gone on for far too long and we want the same rules for all. Whatever their rank, we want leaders who are responsible, exemplary and who are held to account,” declared Emmanuel Macron in March 2017, during his first presidential campaign, taking advantage of the “fake jobs” scandal engulfing François Fillon to set himself apart from his conservative rival.
Unfortunately, these words never became deeds: according to our reckoning, more than 40 of the president’s close allies have been embroiled in at least one affair. And without it harming them.
Most of the time, those who are accused benefit from the tacit support of their colleagues, even those in the opposition. The elected representatives of far-right Rassemblement National, and especially Marine Le Pen, may well lay claim to the slogan “Clean hands, head held high”, but they are so beset by cases themselves that their main refrain is to jeer at judges.
On the Left, there is a lack of people willing to come out and back the judgements handed down by the courts. Just like his successor Emmanuel Macron, François Hollande failed to honour in office the promise that he made during his campaign: “As president of the Republic, I will ensure my behaviour is exemplary at every moment.”
As for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI), he often makes clear the scant regard he has for judicial institutions. Since the searches carried out by prosecutors and police officers at his party’s HQ in October 2018, he has constantly attacked both the procedures and the people who carry them out. This led him, in March 2025, to criticise the conviction of Marine Le Pen to four years in prison – two of them suspended - and five years of ineligibility from public office with immediate effect. Even though a thriving democracy requires strong checks on and counter-balances to power, he took the view that the “decision to remove an elected member should rest with the people”, thus downplaying the core role of the judiciary in upholding the law and punishing any breaches of that law.
As with accusations of “political justice”, an exclusive emphasis on the presumption of innocence has become a shield of immunity. This “entente cordiale” or friendly understanding between politicians directly weakens democracy by feeding the sense among the public that such people are protected. The main outcome of this mood is people not voting - or voting for the far-right.
Media complicity
What is true of political elites is also true of business elites. Corruption, being the meeting point of power and money, is by its nature the work of the privileged, who are keener to preserve their advantages than they are to seek fairness and the common good.
As sociologist Pierre Lascoumes summed it up in L’Économie morale des élites dirigeantes ('The moral economy of ruling elites', published by Presses de Sciences Po in 2022): “On the one hand, men and women in power lay down rules that apply to the governed. On the other, they establish for themselves special rules that shield their interests and positions, and over which they maintain control.”
Faced with this delinquent Republic, anti-corruption civic groups, from Anticor to Sherpa via Transparency International, struggle to get their story across to the many, because they are few in number and receive too little support.
The media are the last big obstacle preventing awareness of the harm that is being done to the people. In France, the sway held over the news by a handful of billionaires - who are more keen on their influence than on press freedom and pluralism - has had the effect of edging out investigations that threaten their businesses.
Our film Personne n’y comprend rien ('No one can make sense of it' – see it with English subtitles here) shows how, from our first revelations in the Libya funding affair, Nicolas Sarkozy had open access to friendly TV stations and papers, whether owned by Lagardère/Bolloré, Bouygues or Dassault, to name just these major media owners. “Fantasy”, “joke”, “disgrace”: his defence - and the rubbishing of our findings - poured into the homes of millions of French people. And this went on unchallenged for years. His conviction by the court in Paris this week has changed nothing; on the contrary, it has only led to a tightening of their ranks.
Role of an independent press
The trial and its verdict thus underline the democratic importance of an independent press that is able to withstand attacks and attempts to silence it. Becoming an online newspaper that unsettles those in power and their networks; that was the challenge Mediapart set itself from its inception in 2008. At the heart of our project is initiating investigations. Publishing police interviews or extracts from judicial case files is less important to us than revealing new, carefully hidden, facts, through publishing fresh testimony and unseen documents.
In the fight against corruption, this has produced results. Most of the legal and institutional gains won over the past 20 years – be it the setting up of the financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet National Financier (PNF), the Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (HATVP) which oversees transparency in public life, and the passing of laws against tax fraud – have come after journalistic revelations, and ours in particular.
Our financial independence, thanks wholly to the support of our subscribers, gives us the financial resources to maintain our editorial independence, on which rests our ability to change things. It is a virtuous circle. For in a democracy worthy of the name, good information is indeed necessary. Not just for a few, but for the greatest possible number.
More than ever, the people need to be told about their representatives' actions and the decisions that are being made in their name. Only then will they be freely able to demand the reforms that are needed to stop a few privileged figures from bending the law to their own gain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter