French prosecutor requests criminal trial for Sarkozy

Mr Sarkozy, 61, is in the third week of a campaign to win the nomination of his conservative Republicans party and run in the presidential election next spring.

His lawyer is denouncing the request by prosecutors as “gross political maneuvering”.

The Paris prosecutor’s office says it’s asking judges to send Sarkozy and 13 others to court in the criminal case.

France’s state prosecutor said on Monday that presidential hopeful Nicholas Sarkozy should stand trial over funding irregularities in his failed 2012 re-election bid, potentially disrupting his new campaign.

While Sarkozy lagged for months in opinion polls behind Alain Jumped, a more centrist former prime minister who is his main rival for the November primaries, his popularity has been improving among right-wing voters.

This was connected to an invoice system his party and a public relations firm named Bygmalion allegedly used to hide unauthorized overspending during campaign events in the run-up to the 2012 contest.

As a result, the campaign was able to greatly exceed a spending limit of €22.5m, the prosecution alleges.

According to EFE news, among the 13 others accused are old UMP leaders, campaign officials and executives from Bygmalion and its subsidiary, Event and Cie.

However, the former president’s campaign director, Guillaume Lambert, has told police he warned Sarkozy of the risk of breaching financing limits.

The investigation centered on a scandal involving the Bygmalion PR company which allegedly falsified Sarkozy’s election campaign bills in order to circumvent France’s strict candidate spending limits.

While the campaign financing case is now the most pressing, Sarkozy has been fighting legal problems on several fronts.

After his humiliating 2012 defeat by Hollande, Sarkozy famously promised that “you won’t hear about me anymore” before he embarked the global conference circuit.