THE former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, said today that he had not been expecting to be sentenced to an immediate prison term of five years after being found guilty of accepting Libyan funds to finance his 2007 election campaign.

In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, the right-wing former president said: “I was ready for everything, but not that, I should confess. Everything moved farther than I could imagine and all limits of law supremacy were breached.

“The National Office of Finance Prosecutor did not ask for that even in his toughest demands.”

Mr Sarkozy said that he did not understand why there was a need to apply the sentence without its deferral to the usual appeal review.

He also said that he failed to understand the justification used by the court that there was a “risk of public order violation” if he remained at liberty.

Mr Sarkozy said there was no evidence from his tax returns for the last 20 years or anything else that indicated that he was a flight risk or intended to run for president again in the future.

As well as the five-year prison term, a Paris court also fined the former president €100,000 (just over £87,000).

The court also found Mr Sarkozy guilty of participating in a criminal conspiracy but found him not guilty of concealing the embezzlement of public funds and of so-called “passive corruption.”

The court also found that two of Mr Sarkozy’s closest associates when he was the president — former ministers Claude Gueant and Brice Hortefeux — were guilty of criminal association, but likewise found not guilty of some of the other charges.

The court sentenced Mr Hortefeux to two years imprisonment, but said time can be served outside prison with an electronic monitoring bracelet. Mr Gueant was handed a six-year term but was not immediately incarcerated for health reasons.