Hyderabad: As Donald Trump became the first former US President to be convicted of felony crimes on Thursday, the first of its kind conviction has reignited the debate on convictions of former heads of states.
A New York jury found the former US President guilty of all 34 charges in a conspiracy to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
ETV Bharat revisits the conviction of former heads of state for various offences.
FRANCE
In 2021 September, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of illegal campaign financing, and he was sentenced to 1 year. Sarkozy is France’s second modern president to be found guilty of corruption, after Jacques Chirac in 2011.
BRAZIL
Former Brazilian President Lula Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to 12 years in jail for corruption, after his conservative rivals took power, but freed after only 580 days in 2019.
CROATIA
A court in Croatia convicted a former prime minister of corruption and sentenced him on Friday to eight years in prison for funnelling state money through an advertising agency for personal gain and to benefit his former party. The Country Court in Zagreb ruled that Ivo Sanader created a group to perform criminal activities which acted upon his instructions. The 67-year-old served as Croatia's prime minister from 2003 to 2009.
ISRAEL
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted in 2015 of accepting bribes and served 16 months in prison. Former President of Israel Moshe Katsav served five years in jail for rape before he was released in 2015.
TAIWAN
Former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was sentenced to 20 years in jail on corruption charges in 2009 but released on medical parole after just six years.
ITALY
Silvio Berlusconi: Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been fighting off (usually successfully) a truly dizzying array of criminal charges throughout almost his entire career in business and politics. A four-year prison sentence for tax fraud was commuted to community service working with elderly dementia patients in 2014. Another conviction, for paying for sex with an underage prostitute, was overturned that same year.
Giulio Andreotti: In 1993, the former Italian premier was among the many leading figures who faced investigation for their alleged association with the mafia. In July 1994, he was formally charged for being a member of the mafia.
SOUTH KOREA
The country's first female president Park Geun-hye was impeached pn bribery charges in 2017 after huge street protests against her rule. She was convicted the following year of bribery and abuse of power and jailed for 30 years. A series of appeals, a retrial and further appeals followed which reduced her sentence to 20 years. In 2021 January the Supreme Court, accepted and confirmed the 20-year sentence.
LEE MYUNG-BAK
In october 2018, A court in South Korea sentenced former President Lee Myung-bak to 15 years in prison after finding him guilty on various charges of corruption, AP reported. The court also ordered him to pay 13 billion won (Rs 84.6 crore) as penalty. Lee, a former businessman, was president between 2008 and 2013.
SOUTH AFRICA
Former South African President Jacob Zuma has faced prosecution over the years for a range of charges including corruption and rape.
ARGENTINA
Former Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was indicted on bribery charges in 2018 and is still on trial.
KAZAKHSTAN
Serik Akhmetov was the prime minister of Kazakstan between 2012 and 2014. By the end of 2015 he had been slapped with a 10-year sentence for embezzlement, in a mass trial with political overtones. On appeal, after admitting guilt – and after his family paid the state the equivalent of well over R200 million – his sentence was reduced to eight years. He was released after two.
PAKISTAN
Nawaz Sharif: Nawaz Sharif was Prime Minister of Pakistan for nearly a decade, over three non-consecutive terms, and was at least at times counted one of its richest citizens, as a dollar billionaire. In 2018 Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and then released during an appeal, before being sentenced to seven years in a separate corruption case in the same year on Dec 2018. He was bailed to seek medical treatment after three months, and absconded to the UK. The government of Pakistan has vowed to see him returned to serve his time.
Imran Khan: Former Pakistan Prime Minister has also been convicted in corruption and secrets leak cases.
Cipher Case
Khan was convicted on 30th January 2024 for making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan's ambassador in Washington in 2022, in what is commonly known as the Cipher case. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He denies the charge and has said the contents appeared in the media from other sources.
Toshakhana case
Also known as the Toshakhana or state treasury case, Khan was previously handed a three-year prison sentence in August 2023 by another court for selling gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession and received during his 2018-2022 premiership.
MALAYSIA
On 28th July 2020, a court in Malaysia has sentenced former PM Najib Razak to 12 years in jail after finding him guilty on all seven counts in the first of several multi-million dollar corruption trials. The 1MDB scandal around a state-owned wealth fund in Malaysia has uncovered a global web of fraud and corruption.
NIGERIA
Olusegun Obasanjo returned as Nigeria's head of state between 1999 and 2007, after a stint as its leader in the late 1970s – and some time in jail in the mid-1990s.His time in prison was rather varied, with conditions including solitary confinement at first, but later a private prison garden to cultivate, complete with another prisoner to help out.
INDIA
In 2000 Former Prime Minister P. V Narasimha Rao was sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh, following his conviction in the Rs 3-crore Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) pay-off case. But his conviction was overturned in 2002 by the Delhi High court.
