It’s totally beyond me why they haven’t condemned him to serve his time in prison. He has been convinced of wrongdoing and corruption, and yet, he can spend his time at his comfortable home, instead of in a prison cell.
France has truly devolved into a banana republic during the last decades, not least thanks to Sarkozy himself, who did his utter most to weaken the judicial system during his term. As we can see, he was at least in parts successful.
Serious question.
Can you name some politicians (MPs, ministers) who are actually serving a sentence???
The last one I can think of is Jeffery Archer, which was late 90’s or early 2000’s
Just a quick look, Fiona Onasanya (perverting the course of justice), Chris Huhne (similar). If we’re going beyond the UK, we can look at other instances which feature actual corruption!
Rod Blagojevich (former Governor of Illinois, trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat, but his sentence was commuted by Trump in the end) himself succeeded George Ryan (former Governor of Illinois, corruption charges), while there’s also Edwin Edwards (former Governor of Louisiana, for corruption). I’m sure there are others, but off the top of my head I can’t remember any.
There have been loads over the last 20 years. At one point you were 4 times more likely to be a convicted criminal if you were/had been an MP than if you were an ordinary member of the public.
The former Barnsley Central MP had the dishonour of being the first MP to be convicted over the expenses scandal after he was handed a 12-month sentence for making false claims
In mid-2009 Mr Illsley was exposed by the Daily Telegraph for making so-called “phantom” claims for council tax on his expenses. Over a four-year period he claimed more than £10,000 from the taxpayer, despite the total bill for the property amounting to only £3,966.
He also made regular submissions for £200 expense claims which were just below the limit where he would have been required to file receipts.
He was imprisoned for three months before being released on an electronic tag, and going on to appear on BBC Newsnight just months after his release claiming his excess claims were “an allowance for living in London”.
30 Sep
Former environment minister Elliot Morley was banged up in May 2011 after he pleaded guilty to £32,000 of expenses fraud.
From 2004 to 2006, the Scunthorpe Labour MP made 19 claims for excessive mortgage payments while also filling out a further 21 second home allowance forms for another mortgage which he had already paid off.
He was sentenced to 16 months, but was released less than five months later.
Perverting the course of justice over speeding tickets is a cross-party crime. Disgraced former Lib Dem Cabinet minister Chris Huhne and his now ex-wife Vicky Pryce were both sentenced to eight months inside after they engaged in a scheme to transfer speeding points away from Mr Huhne.
The plan only came to light when Vicky Pryce approached a Sunday Times journalist in the wake of her husband’s affair with accusations that he had coerced people into taking his speeding points.
When the story came to light, the Crown Prosecution Service laid charges against both of them for the crime. Mr Huhne eventually pled guilty and stepped down as an MP. Ms Pryce put forward a defence of marital coercion but was found guilty by a jury.
The pair each served two months of their sentences before being released. Mr Huhne was electronically tagged and subject to a curfew.
Ex-Livingstone MP Jim Devine was jailed after being found guilty of claiming £8,385 of parliamentary expenses for work on his home by a company which never existed.
The judge in the case slammed him for false accounting with the “entirely bogus” receipts.
The former chair of Scottish Labour served four months of his 16-month sentence before being released and electronically tagged.
Another expenses offender, David Chaytor was handed the longest sentence of any of the MPs caught up in the scandal – 18 months.
Mr Chaytor – like the other less-than-honourable members– was taken to court for false accounting charges. The case against him revolved around £18,000 worth of expenses which he was found to have falsely claimed from the taxpayer.
One of the most serious charges against Mr Chaytor was for making rental payments towards a property which he owned. He was accused of using fake tenancy agreements to hoodwink the expenses office.
His attempt to appeal the sentence failed, but he was released under home supervision conditions just five months later.
The Rotherham Labour ex-MP was suspended from the party multiple times as continued revelations about his expenses were exposed over an 18-month period. He was first referred to the police after it came to light that he had made £125,000-worth of expenses claims for his constituency office - which was his garage.
Writing before the charges were laid, Mr MacShane attempted to play down the seriousness of the scandal, telling the Guardian: “There will come a moment when moats and manure, bath plugs and tampons will be seen as a wonderful moment of British fiddling, but more on a Dad’s Army scale than the real corruption of politics.”
He was eventually charged with false accounting for the creation of £12,900 of bogus receipts and was banged up for six months.
The member for Peterborough was booted out of the Labour party earlier this month after she was found to have lied about a speeding charge in order to avoid a police ticket.
The MP and former solicitor was convicted at a retrial of colluding with her brother, Festus, after her Nissan Micra was caught going at 41mph in a 30mph zone near Peterborough in July 2017.
She was sentenced to an immediate three-month jail term, while her brother received a 10 month custodial sentence.
She is the first sitting MP to be jailed in 28 years.
Missing from the list is Charlie Elphicke, a former Conservative MP.
He was convicted last year for three counts of sexual assault against two different women (two whilst he was an MP).
In the last 20 years 8 MPs have been imprisoned for offences committed whilst they were an MP. 6 Labour, 1 Conservative, 1 LibDem.
I guess it’s ridiculously difficult to charge them in the first place? So, lots probably avoided the net all together.
François Fillion got 2 years ‘ferme’ and 3 years avec sursis. So 2 years in prison, I don’t know if he served them though. Btw he was Sarkozy’s Prime Minister.
Sentence was too short for it to be ‘ferme’. In France we are trying to not ‘over fill’ the prisons.
It says former Frp-politician, but that’s because he had to step down and etc. due to the serious charges.
English translation (but google’s and not mine, so may be funny language at times):
The Supreme Court sharpens the punishment for the parliamentary representative.
In the Court of Appeal, the former FRP politician was sentenced to seven months in prison, but the prosecution appealed the sentencing to the Supreme Court.
Keshvari had filed 75 fictitious travel invoices over a period of about three years. The total amount was just under NOK 450,000. The bills applied to travel that had never taken place.
In its summary, the Supreme Court writes that “in determining the sentence, it was taken into account that the representative has given an unreserved confession”.
They also write that “emphasis has been placed on the fact that there was a serious breach of trust committed in the role of parliamentary representative”.
In the court decision, the Supreme Court writes that “the scheme is largely based on the trust one generally has and must have in the members of the Storting as the people’s highest representatives. Keshvari has seriously abused this trust. He has taken advantage of the fact that the scheme, due to the special considerations that exist, was easy to abuse, with a low risk of detection ».
Wanted ordinary citizen punishment
Keshvari’s defense counsel, John Christian Elden, after the ruling in the Court of Appeal, dropped the claim that the Supreme Court should reduce the sentence to what an ordinary citizen would receive for a similar fraud, but the Supreme Court has not taken this into account.
It was in October 2018 that Aftenposten revealed that Keshvari had been paid money to cover a number of trips that had not taken place. The former FRP politician has paid back the money and publicly apologized to the Storting and the Norwegian people.
He has also resigned from all political positions and resigned from the Progress Party.
Silvio Berlusconi only exempted from jail time due to his being over 70 yrs old. former Italian Prime Minister.
Jeffrey Archer is probably the most famous of MPs actually imprisoned in recent memory.
But then whilst in prison he wrote a bestseller about prison life - so alls well that ends well. 
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Christ almighty.
This is obviously systemic. A second officer, to go along with that nickname of Couzens.
You don’t get someone nicknamed ‘the rapist’ for nothing.
The whole lot need investigating absolutely no point calling for the chiefs head tyhey all need weeding out. Problem is who could be charged with the investigation?
im 100% sure that will work and solve all the problems.
I’m wasn’t sure this is the best thread for this, however …
I saw, glimpsing at BFMTV whilst working that the polls for the up coming French Presidential elections have Macron in the lead and BFMTV’s favorite, Zemmour, just behind.
This is attrocious, Macron is by far the better candidate but looking at the numbers Zemmour has more than a good chance of winning the second tour. Zemmour, with little surprise, is taking votes away from Le Pen and if you ask me he’s worst than Le Pen (at least with her you know what’s on the table.
A second tour Macron Vs Zemmour would be a horrible situation the few lefties that are left would have no-one to vote for, leaving the path open for Zemmour.
Zemmour is a horrible biggotted man who has fronted his own ‘Editorial’ on BFMTV for a number of years now. He’s one of those clever arseholes who manages to manipulate history by mixing ‘facts’ with his version of things (which due to the lack of education goes down well with the popular ‘vote’.
Anyway I don’t see any other option but to support Macron which is an extremely horrible situation to be in. 
Sadly so much politics comes down to ‘which of these bastards do you least hate’.
Or more accurately ‘which theiving bastard lies the least’