A Paris court is to issue its verdict Thursday in the trial of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy on charges of accepting illegal campaign financing from late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with prosecutors demanding a seven-year prison sentence.

The ruling is the latest in a string of legal hurdles for the right-wing ex-leader, 70, who denies the charges. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France's highest honour.

The judgement has been overshadowed by the death on Tuesday in Beirut of Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key accuser of Sarkozy in the case.

Takieddine had claimed several times that he helped deliver up to five million euros ($6 million) in cash from Kadhafi to Sarkozy and the fo

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