It's way more complicated than this.

First, this is mostly about things that happened before his election.

The tribunal ruled he did not personally benefit, and he did not directly solicit money to finance his campaign either.

However, some of his closest allies (who would become his ministers later) did the latter. The tribunal could not find any direct proof he was involved but ruled there were enough "converging indications" that he knew and did nothing to stop it.

To be fair, the probability that the short explanation "He received money from Libya for his presidential campaign" is actually the truth is very high.

There is no formal proofs, but as you say, (the judges deliberated that) there is enough "converging indications" to support the idea that the short explanation is true.

I'm sure the court could have gotten him on other charges, but they went with the absolutely 100% safe one rather than the other 99% safe ones.

Sarkozy and all of his billionaire media allies are already trying their hardest to undermine the credibility of the justice system at every turn with extremely dangerous rhetoric; I dread to imagine what this would have been like had they gone with ever-so-slightly-less-safe charges

How would one differentiate Sarkozy being in the know, and one of Sarkozy's inner circle doing it and keeping him in the dark?

That is a very good question.

The short answer is you can't. But There is enough hints that he maybe implicated at least as much as his collaborators.

One for example, is a testimony of a "smuggler" that he deposited the dirty money 2 times to his collaborator and once directly to Sarkozy. Not enough, he could lie.

A write-up of a meeting preparing the coming of Sarkozy (in arabic) that suggests there is another important subject to the visit of Sarkozy in Lybia. In a way that coincides, we know that the discuss alone (Gaddafy, Sarkozy and Guéant without any diplomatic representative only translators). Not enough, maybe it was another secret subject.

That may explains the famous trip of Gaddafy in Paris. (10 of December 2007, which was an unexpected move regarding his implication in multiple "plane terrorist attacks" (DC10 UTA ( UTA 772),Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie)) and the "greatness" of the trip which was in "great fanfare" very uncommon one. https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3984020 Maybe Sarkozy really trade welcoming trip for good contracts but nobody trusts that.

It can also explains the implication of Sarkozy in nato air strike on Lybia to help the rebels (that leads to Gaddafy death). Gaddafy may have ask for help to interfere the revolt, and Sarkozy couln't politicaly explains it so did the opposite. At that moment, Lybia official reported that he must get the money back and that he was financed by their money (one of the two who reported it is dead, the other one is in exile and it's more complicated because he first support Sarkozy to get extracted from Lybia as he was caught by the rebels). At that time, nobody trusted the Lybia representative as the regime was a terrorist state.

Sooo, you can't tell that he knows, but it does explains a lot.

If the justice system doesn’t know exactly why it’s putting Sarkozy in prison, he does...

This is disinformation.

The tribunal didn't rule he didn't personally benefit. It ruled that he conspired to corrupt the leaders of Lybia to steal money from the Lybian people and fund his electoral campaign. In my book becoming president of France is certainly a "personal benefit". There are numerous factual evidence, documents from Lybia, fund transfers, secret meetings of his closest friends with Abdullah Senussi, who has been convicted to life in prison in France for orchestrating the bombing of UTA flight 772 which resulted in 170 deaths and is also currently investigated for another plane bombing.

The money he got allowed him to spend about twice the allowed amount on his campaign, giving him an unfair advantage in the election. In other words he dealt with terrorists to potentially steal the presidential election. What Sarkozy did is extremely severe, I'd call that high treason. He got far less that he deserved.

Also it's worth mentioning that it is his third conviction. He already got a 2 years and 1 year sentence which were confirmed in appeal in other cases.

I read that the ruling mention that they couldn't prove the money was used for the campaign and that the conviction is all about the participation in the conspiration you mention.

To be honest, what I would want to know is if he sent us to war in Libya to hide his crimes. That would be the real evil to me.

Getting him to jail for asking someone for campaign money really gives a weird feeling in that sense.

> The tribunal ruled he did not personally benefit

the money didn't go in his pocket, but he benefited from it by being elected president (partly thanks to this illegal funding), which to this day gives him a life of money and various privileges.

Not just from Libya, he met & received money from the brother in law of the Libyan dictator Muhamar Kadhaffi

The brother in law personally orchestrated the crashe of a civilian airliner, killing 170 passengers

Not only this, but he plotted to whitewash the terrorist responsible for a terror attack on a plane which killed more French people than the terror attacks of the Bataclan... this guy is despicable and merits to be behind bars

This was 36 years ago. He became president 18 years ago, and only now in prison. Justice sure takes its time. I used to live in the same street as this prison, it's only a 5 km walk to Elysée.