A French court has ruled that former president Nicolas Sarkozy, 71, will not be required to wear an electronic ankle tag as punishment for illegally overspending on his failed 2012 re-election campaign using a PR firm called Bygmalion and then attempting to conceal it. The court cited his advanced age in granting the exemption, following a similar decision last year that saw an ankle tag removed early in a separate case involving an alleged attempt to extract favours from a judge. Sarkozy, who served as France's president from 2007 to 2012, has accumulated multiple criminal convictions since leaving office and last year became the first former head of state in modern France to be imprisoned, spending 20 days in jail in a case linked to alleged Libyan funding of his 2007 election campaign.