Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted on his own innocence and decried what he called a politically-motivated conspiracy of revenge against him as he was ordered to become the first leader from the modern French state to go to jail.

A Paris court found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty on Thursday morning over criminal conspiracy in relation to a broadly unproven alleged plot earlier this century to use money from the then Libyan government of dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to fund Sarkozy’s 2007 Presidential Election campaign. The court said it had been unable to prove any money ever actually changed hands, but said it was satisfied an attempt to get money from Libya had taken place, and that corruption schemes are illegal under French law even if they are unsu

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