French ex-President stands accused in Bygmalion Trial
The 2012 Presidential Campaign
In France, the law restricts the amount of money that can be spent on a presidential campaign, in order to maintain equity amongst candidates to a certain extend. The rules are straightforward: for candidates qualifying for the second round of the election, the maximum amount is set at 22.5 million euros. It turns out, the amount spent on ex-president Sarkozy’s second round campaign nearly doubled this sum. One may ask how this was done without blowing up. During the campaign itself, there were some protests about the scale, sound and video equipment of some of his election rallies.
While there is a system in place to sanction such wrongdoings, the so-called « commission of campaign accounts », the verification of these accounts is only made after the end of the campaign. When a candidate is found guilty of exceeding the amount, he is denied the refund of half the campaign costs usually granted by the government.
But immediately following the 2012 election, no excessive bills were encountered by the commission in charge, as the tracks had been covered beforehand. Indeed, the cost of campaign meetings was under-evaluated in order to fit the campaign budget, and the difference was then paid to Bygmalion, the company providing technical services, by the candidate’s party, UMP (now « LR »). Finally, bills for conventions that never took place were forged to regularize the party’s accounts.
The Bygmalion trial
Suspicions began to rise regarding the very high amounts the UMP paid Bygmalion. Jean François Copé, former president of the party, had close ties to the executives of the firm. Bygmalion was suspected of over-evaluating the cost of campaign meetings for Copé’s personal profit. After successive journalistic revelations, the company’s spokesperson revealed the true nature of the affair in a press conference.
14 individuals in total, amongst which Nicolas Sarkozy, were accused of forgery, use of forged documents, attempted fraud, breach of trust and concealment and abetment. A majority confessed to knowing what was happening, but it remains unclear who took the initiative. The timeline of events is crucial here. Some of Bygmalion’s senior executives admitted having cooperated since the end of May, stating they felt like they had no choice, as the alternative meant not getting paid and bankrupting the company. Bygmalion’s head and founder, Bastien Millot, who also had very close ties to Copé, denied any knowledge or involvement in the affair.
Nicolas Sarkozy was only physically present on one day of the trial. The charges against him are amongst the lowest in this case. Indeed, the investigation did not prove he was the one to compel these actions. He pleaded he did not know about anything, as he wasn’t the one dealing with material things, and only accepts political responsibility in what happened. Although this last point does not seem very plausible, as it is for example his signature that can be found on the falsified bank account tied to the fraud. In the end, the prosecutors required 1 year of prison, including unconditional imprisonment for 6 months.
Political and legislative consequences
Less than a year after Nicolas Sarkozy’s trial in the context of the so-called « wire tap case » that made him the first French ex-president to physically attend a trial against him, it is one in a list of many legal problems encountered by the former president. Nicholas Roussellier, as he told the Huffington Post, finds that this can be considered the marker of a new era. Indeed, up until then the French president always held a special position, not to say apart from the law, but special in that a procedure such as the American impeachment for example would have been unthinkable in France.
This could be synonym of a judicialization of French politics, also marked by the growing role of the Constitutional Court. In terms of more direct consequences however, it can be noted that the Bygmalion affair contributed to the UMP tearing itself apart. Rivalries within the party were pre-existent, but this affair acted as a medium to settle said rivalries for some members, such as François Fillon for example. After his related disgrace just before the 2017 presidential campaign, some associate the Bygmalion affair to the fact that the French right did not qualify its candidate for the second round of presidential elections for the first time in 2017.
Finally, more tangible consequences of this affair are the reforms in regulations concerning policing of campaign accounts that were made. Since 2014, the commission of campaign accounts is allowed to refer itself to experts in order to obtain an evaluation of the cost of a meeting. Candidates are also now required to officially declare what is and what is not paid for by his or her party, to avoid the Bygmalion scenario to reoccur.
From a legal point of view, one could say much remains to be done. The fact that accounts are reviewed only after the election and not in real-time, when the election results are not invalidated in the case of non compliance for example. Or that it is constitutionally not possible in France to ask for a review of a political party’s accounts. If France enters an era of judicialization of politics, this could mean more accountability for the country’s policymakers, but will surely bring with it another load of distrust from French citizens towards their government.
Picture Caption: The Bygmalion trial took place in the 11th chamber of the judicial tribunal of Paris, seen in the photo.