Ex-French President Sarkozy stripped of country’s top honour after graft conviction

PARIS: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been stripped of his Legion of Honour — the country’s highest distinction — following a conviction for graft, according to a decree published Sunday.

The right-winger has been beset by legal problems since he was defeated in the 2012 presidential election after serving one five-year term.

Sarkozy, 70, had been wearing an electronic ankle tag until last month after France’s highest appeals court upheld his conviction last December of trying to illegally secure favours from a judge.According to the code of the Legion of Honour, France’s top state award, any person definitively sentenced to a term in prison equal to or greater than one year is excluded from the order.

But French President Emmanuel Macron had argued against such a move in April, saying that scandal-plagued Sarkozy had been elected and it was “very important that former presidents are respected.”

Despite his legal problems, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the right and is known to regularly socialise with the head of state.Others to have been stripped of the honour include former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, drug cheat cyclist Lance Armstrong and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein whose conduct with women sparked the #MeToo movement against sexual violence.Sarkozy, whose electronic tag was removed this month, is using his last remaining legal avenue, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, to defend himself against the conviction.Any ECHR ruling against France would “imply reviewing the criminal conviction against (Sarkozy) as well as his exclusion from the order of the Legion of Honour,” Spinosi said.

Sarkozy is currently on trial in a separate case on charges of accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.