French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption.

The 66-year-old was found guilty of trying to bribe a magistrate by offering him a prestigious job in return for information about a separate criminal case against Sarkozy.

He is the first former French president to receive a custodial sentence and is expected to appeal.The judge said Sarkozy could serve a year at home with an electronic tag.

The conservative politician "knew what [he] was doing was wrong", the judge said, adding that his actions and those of his lawyer had given the public "a very bad image of justice".

The crimes were specified as influence-peddling and violation of professional secrecy.

It is a legal landmark for post-war France. The only precedent was the trial of Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac, who got a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for having arranged bogus jobs at Paris City Hall for allies when he was Paris mayor. Chirac died in 2019.