How best to explain why exactly Parisian judges have hit former French President Nicolas Sarkozy with a five-year prison sentence. Let’s just say that he was found guilty of supervising a bunch of movers. And those movers were hauling around suitcases. Loaded with cash. Around $50 million, to be precise.

Sarkozy will learn his prison check-in date on October 13. And appeal or no appeal, he’s expected to show up for his staycation behind bars. All this, even though the actual corruption charges mostly slid right past Sarkozy and smacked one of his top lieutenants instead.

Sarkozy had been staring down heavyweight corruption charges over allegations he siphoned millions in Libyan cash to bankroll his 2007 presidential campaign. But he walked on that. The only charge that actually stuck was criminal conspiracy – because the court found that proof of a conspiracy to extract cash from a foreign country for his presidential campaign existed, but not that Sarkozy’s fingerprints were on the envelopes.

Instead, the judges said that Sarkozy “allowed his close collaborators and political supporters – over whom he had authority and acted on his behalf” to solicit the Libyan authorities “in order to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support in Libya with a view to obtaining campaign financing,” as Le Figaro reported. Basically, the gang got caught, and the boss got dinged for pretending to look the other way.

His campaign manager, Claude Guéant, got nailed for actual corruption, resulting in a six-year........

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