Sarkozy risks losing top honour: general

PARIS: Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is likely to be stripped of France´s top award the Legion d´honneur (Legion of Honour) after his definitive conviction last year on charges of influence-peddling and corruption, the general who leads the order said on Tuesday.

Sarkozy, in an unprecedented punishment for a former head of state, is now wearing an electronic ankle tag after France´s Court of Cassation in December upheld a verdict for him to serve a one-year jail term outside of prison with the GPS device.

General Francois Lecointre, France´s former military chief of staff who now serves as the grand chancellor of the Legion of Honour, said that such a removal of the award was forseen under the rules of the order which was established early in the 19th century by Napoleon Bonaparte.

“Since exclusion (from the order) is provided for de-facto by the rules of the Legion of Honour, I don´t think there are many uncertainties,” Lecointre told reporters, insisting on the importance of “exemplarity” from recipients.

“Things will happen in their time and I think they will happen,” added the general. According to the code of the Legion of Honour, any person definitively sentenced to a prison sentence equal to or greater than one year in prison is “excluded by right” from the order, Lecointre noted.

“As you have seen, president Sarkozy has been definitively sanctioned by the courts so the disciplinary procedure will be launched, under the rules of the Legion of Honour,” he said.