Yves Conroy (orange shirt) in a 2003 protest against Gaston Flosse, in Papeete. Photo: RNZI / Walter Zweifel
French Polynesia's criminal court has given a jail sentence for tax fraud to the man who brought down Gaston Flosse.
Yves Conroy has been sentenced to 18 months in jail along with his son Yannick over fraudulent deals in their solar panel business.
His lawyer said he would appeal, meaning Conroy's candidacy as an independent for a seat in the June election of the French National Assembly was still on.
While working as a public servant, Conroy was the person to trigger the investigation into Flosse's phantom job network which led to the biggest court case of its kind in French legal history and saw Flosse being convicted and lose office in 2014.
This week, Flosse and several other of Tahiti's top leaders were ordered to repay more than 2 million US dollars to the public purse for their misspending between 1996 and 2004.
Last year, Conroy told the UN decolonsation committee that France had recognised his late wife as the first victim of radiation from its weapons tests who had never been to a test site.