Jacqueline Laffont, lawyer for the former President of the Republic, castigated on BFMTV the decision of the Court of Appeal which, according to her, poses “serious legal problems since the beginning” of the case dating back to 2014.
“An extraordinary affair.” Guest of BFMTV this Wednesday, Jacqueline Laffont, Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyer, spoke after the former president was sentenced to three years in prison, including one year to be served under an electronic bracelet, for corruption and influence peddling. in the wiretapping business.
According to her, this court decision poses “serious legal problems from day one”. “It’s unheard of. We have a case of corruption without consideration: without money, without advantage and without intervention. We have a case of corruption, not for having done something but for having envisaged if necessary to do something”, lamented Jacqueline Laffont on our antenna.
A cassation appeal
On leaving the court, she castigated a “staggering”, “unfair and unfair” decision, and immediately announced that she was going to “file an appeal in cassation, an appeal which is suspensive of all the measures which have been pronounced today. today”.
The lawyer then justified this appeal on BFMTV: “We will go to the end in this file because we consider that Nicolas Sarkozy cannot be condemned on a total absence of evidence.”
In this corruption case, born of telephone interceptions between Nicolas Sarkozy and Thierry Herzog, his lawyer and longtime friend, the former head of state “used his status as former president (… ) to serve his personal interest”, considered on the contrary the court of appeal in its motivation, a “deviation” which “heavily undermines the rule of law” and which “requires a firm criminal response”.
In these tappings, broadcast for the first time at the appeal trial, Nicolas Sarkozy, then awaiting a decision from the Court of Cassation in the Bettencourt affair, undertakes “to bring up” the magistrate Gilbert Azibert or to make a “step” in his favour.
For the Court of Appeal, this is indeed a “corruption pact”. In exchange for a “boost” for an honorary post in Monaco, the magistrate tried to influence an appeal in cassation filed by the ex-president.