French prosecutors on Monday told former French president Nicolas Sarkozy that he must report to a Paris prison on October 21 to begin serving a five-year sentence for illegally accepting funds from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fund his 2007 presidential run.

Sarkozy will serve his sentence at Santé Prison in Paris pending his appeal, AFP reported, citing sources close to the proceedings.

The National Financial Prosecutor’s office told Sarkozy the specifics of his detention during a brief formal meeting on Monday afternoon. Sarkozy left the courthouse shortly afterward.

Sarkozy, 70, denies wrongdoing, and has called the verdict “a scandal”.

France’s leader from 2007 to 2012, Sarkozy was convicted in late September. The former president immediately appealed his conviction, with a new trial expected in the coming months.

He will be the first French postwar leader and the first former head of a European Union country to serve jail time.

Extra security measures are expected, with Sarkozy possibly placed in a unit for vulnerable prisoners or held in solitary confinement.

Once in custody, his lawyers can petition the appeals court for his release, but he will remain in custody unless it decides otherwise.

During the trial, prosecutors argued Sarkozy and his aides, acting with his authority and in his name, struck a deal with Gaddafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious presidential election bid two years later.

Investigators believe that in return, Gaddafi was promised help in restoring his international image after the West blamed Tripoli for bombing a plane in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.

The court’s ruling found he was guilty of criminal conspiracy, with presiding judge Nathalie Gavarino saying the offences were of “exceptional gravity”.

Source: AFP