A major criminal investigation into the affairs of L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, and notably the suspected illegal funding of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign, has established that at least 800,000 euros were withdrawn from her secret Swiss bank accounts when Sarkozy was running for the presidency.
Earlier this month, Bettencourt’s long-serving wealth manager, Patrice de Maistre, was imprisoned after being placed under formal investigation –one step short of being charged - on a total of three counts of suspected financial corruption and for abusing the mental frailty of the L’Oréal heiress, now aged 89.
Bordeaux-based Judge Jean-Michel Gentil notably concluded that there were “important” grounds for suspecting Maistre of participating in the “provision of cash by compensation” involving some 4 million euros during the period from February 5th 2007 to December 7th 2009.
In his formal summary of the evidence against Maistre on March 22nd, the judge noted that “witnesses have given testimony of a visit to the Bettencourt household by [then] Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy during the 2007 electoral campaign” and announced further investigations into the allegations of cash donations to Sarkozy’s campaign “are therefore necessary”.
Earlier this year, President Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign treasurer, former budget and labour minister Eric Woerth, was placed under formal investigation for “handling" illegal funding of Sarkozy’s campaign and for “influence peddling”. Woerth, 56, was also treasurer of Sarkozy’s UMP party between 2002 and 2010. He remains a Member of Parliament and mayor of the town of Chantilly, north of Paris.
After Sarkozy’s election, Woerth was appointed budget minister, when he is suspected of abusing his position to convince Maistre to employ his wife, Florence Woerth, as an investment advisor for Bettencourt. Two months after she was hired in November 2007 on a yearly salary of 200,000 euros, Woerth decorated Maistre with the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest award for civil merit.
Maistre and Woerth have admitted meeting on several occasions during Sarkozy’s 2007 election bid, although they have denied that they were involved in illegal funding of the campaign. In a rare comment on the illegal funding allegations, in a television interview in July 2010, the French president dismissed them as “a calumny, a campaign” adding “it is shameful”.
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Initial evidence of the suspected scam emerged in July 2010, after Mediapart published an exclusive interview with Bettencourt’s former accountant, Claire Thibout, in which she said Maistre asked her, in January 2007, to help prepare 150,000 euros in cash, drawn from Bettencourt’s accounts, which she was allegedly told was to be handed to Woerth.
Thibout said 50,000 euros of the total sum were drawn by her from an account with a Paris branch of the BNP bank, while she was understood that the remaining 100,000 euros were to be drawn by Maistre from a secret bank account belonging to Bettencourt in Switzerland. She reiterated her account when later questioned by police.
Following an investigation carried out in cooperation with the authorities in Switzerland, Judge Gentil has now discovered that two cash withdrawals were made from Liliane Bettencourt’s Swiss accounts during the 2007 election campaign. Both withdrawals amounted to 400,000 euros. The first was made on February 5th and the second on April 26th 2007, both of which correspond with key dates in evidence already collected concerning the suspected illegal funding of Sarkozy’s campaign.
Liliane Bettencourt, who has a personal fortune estimated by Forbes in 2011 to total 17 billion euros, making her one of the wealthiest individuals in France and the wealthiest woman in Europe, is the majority shareholder of L'Oréal, the world's largest cosmetics company founded by her father, Eugène Schueller.
In 2010 she was at the centre of a major political and financial scandal sparked by her donations to a French high-society dandy, celebrity photographer and one-time author, François-Marie Banier, of gifts, including art works and insurance policies, valued at 1 billion euros.
A medical examination ordered by the magistrates last June found that Bettencourt was suffering from “mixed dementia” and “a moderately severe stage [sic] of Alzheimer’s disease”. The examination report said that the “slow degenerative cerebral process” she is afflicted with had already begun in 2007.
Liliane’s daughter and only child, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, 58, launched legal action against Banier for "abuse" of Liliane's mental frailty, and engaged on a lengthy legal procedure to have her mother made a ward of court. The move was bitterly opposed by Liliane, who said she gave the gifts to Banier of her free will, and accused her daughter of acting in jealousy over her closeness with the socialite.
The family feud ignited a major political scandal in June 2010 when Mediapart exclusively revealed secret recordings of conversations between Liliane Bettencourt and her close entourage of advisors, notably Maistre, taped by Bettencourt’s butler between 2009 and 2010. The tapes, which were handed over to police, revealed evidence of tax evasion, influence peddling, the suspected illegal funding of Sarkozy's UMP party, and interference in justice proceedings by a French presidential advisor. (A list of links to a selection of Mediapart articles about the scandal can be found at the end of this report).
Sarkozy: 'I have the right not to answer'
The dates of the two 400,000-euro cash withdrawals from Bettencourt’s Swiss accounts are significant. It has been established that Maistre and Woerth met together on February 7th 2007, two days after the first withdrawal was made. Meanwhile, François-Marie Banier’s personal diaries, seized as evidence in the case, contain a note he wrote against the date of April 26th 2007, which was the date of the second cash withdrawal. “De Maistre tells me that Sarkozy is again asking for money”, Banier wrote. During questioning by police about the entry, Banier offered the convoluted comment that they were his “observations about low-case lives and capital vices”, adding “that also corresponds with the reality I experienced”.
The date of April 26th was four days after the first round of voting in the 2007 presidential elections, from which Sarkozy and Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal emerged as the two candidates eligible for the second and final play-off, held on May 6th, which Sarkozy won.
Following her interview with Mediapart in July 2010, Claire Thibout was called as a witness in preliminary investigations into the affairs of Liliane Bettencourt. She provided investigators with an agenda detailing accounts kept in 2007, in which is notably recorded, on the date of January 18th: “Appointment with Madame Bettencourt to give envelope who will give to Patrice [sic]”. This was a reference to Patrice de Maistre who, the judicial investigation has established, met with Woerth the following day, January 19th 2007, close to Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign headquarters in Paris. The two men have told investigators that this was a social meeting over a coffee.
Thibout’s accounting books, seized as evidence, also show a series of cash withdrawals made on the demand of her employers between the end of 2006 and early 2007.
On February 16th this year Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to the town of Annecy on the first official trip of his current re-election campaign , one week after Eric Woerth was placed under investigation for “handling" illegal financing of the 2007 campaign and for “influence peddling”. Approached by Mediapart for a reaction, he replied: “Listen. What are you asking me about that? I am here, in Annecy, I don’t want to talk about that. Listen, we’re in a democracy, and one has the right not to answer questions. You have the right to ask them, I have the right not to answer.”
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For more on the Bettencourt affair and issues raised in this article, click on the links below:
Sarkozy campaign treasurer under investigation for illegal funding, influence peddling
L'Oréal heiress ordered to pay 77.7 million euros after tax scam probe
Behind the bettencourt affair: the battle for L'Oréal
A scandal too far: Bettencourt magistrate is disowned
French prosecutor in Bettencourt affair illegally spied journalists' phone calls
The eerie plot penned by L'Oréal family scandal dandy in 1971
Dinners, cash and Sarkozy: what Bettencourt's accountant told Mediapart
Bettencourt butler bites back: 'I saw L'Oréal family destroyed'
Bettencourt battle back after L'Oréal heiress signs away 143 million euros
The political guard watching over L'Oréal
Bettencourt chauffeur adds to Sarkozy campaign fund allegations
Bettencourt tapes stolen in mystery break-ins targetting Mediapart, Le Point and Le Monde
French interior minister drops libel action against Mediapart
Why we need a strong media in France
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English version: Graham Tearse