Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to face trial on charges of illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election bid, causing more trouble for the country's Republicans party.
The prosecution claims Sarkozy spent nearly double the legal limit of 22.5 million euros ($24 million) on his lavish campaign, using false billing from a public relations firm called Bygmalion.
Sarkozy's lawyer announced plans to appeal the decision.
Bygmalion charged 15.2 million euros in campaign events to Sarkozy's rightwing party -- which at the time was called the UMP, but has since been renamed the Republicans -- instead of billing the president's campaign.
The trial will focus on whether he himself caused the over-spending in 2012 by demanding that additional rallies be organised towards the end of his campaign, even though they were bound to blow the budget.
Thirteen other people will be tried alongside him on charges ranging from fraud to illegal campaign financing, including Bygmalion's management and Jerome Lavrilleux, deputy manager of Sarkozy's lavish 2012 campaign.
Note
Only one other president -- Jacques Chirac -- has been tried in France's Fifth Republic, which was founded in 1958. He was given a two-year suspended jail term in 2011 over a fake jobs scandal.
While the so-called Bygmalion case is the most pressing, Sarkozy has been fighting legal problems on several fronts.
He is charged with corruption and influence peddling for allegedly offering to help a judge swing a plum retirement job in return from secret information about another case.
He has also been accused by former members of Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi's regime of accepting millions in cash towards his first presidential campaign in 2007 from Kadhafi -- claims he has vehemently denied.
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