Magistrates in charge of several investigations into a series of suspected corruption scams surrounding the financial affairs of 90 year-old L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, Europe’s wealthiest woman, have decided to send for trial her former butler and five journalists, including Mediapart’s editor-in chief Edwy Plenel, on charges relating to breach of privacy.
The charges against the journalists centre on the publication, first by Mediapart and subsequently by French weekly news magazine Le Point, of the contents of secretly-taped conversations between the billionaire and her close advisors and which exposed evidence of money laundering, tax evasion, illegal political funding, ministerial conflicts of interest and interference by presidential staff in the proper workings of the justice system.
Along with Edwy Plenel, the four other journalists to stand trial are Mediapart’s investigative reporter Fabrice Arfi, his former Mediapart colleague Fabrice Lhomme (who now works for French daily Le Monde), Franz-Olivier Giesbert, editor-in-chief of Le Point and the weekly’s former editor Hervé Gattegno, who has since joined the French edition of monthly magazine Vanity Fair.
The three magistrates, based in Bordeaux, have charged the journalists with ‘handling a document that breaches the intimacy of private life’, while Bettencourt’s former butler, Pascal Bonnefoy, who made the recordings, has been charged with ‘breaching the privacy of a person’s private life’. Official notification of the charges, dated August 30th, was received by Mediapart on Monday.
It was the publication of the recordings, in 2010, that eventually led to a wide-ranging investigation that has seen former president Nicolas Sarkozy and one of his former ministers, Eric Woerth, placed under investigation (a French legal status one step short of being charged) along with several of Bettencourt’s former financial and legal advisors. A decision by the same magistrates on whether to send them for trial on corruption charges is imminent.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The conversations were taped by Bonnefoy over a 12-month period between May 2009 and May 2010, using a voice recorder hidden in an office at the billionaire’s mansion home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, close to Paris. Bonnefoy later explained to police that he had made the recordings to disclose the corrupt activities he had witnessed by Bettencourt’s close circle of socialites and advisors, and notably her wealth and investment manager, Patrice de Maistre, all of whom he said "hide behind a tired and fragile woman". He resigned from his job, which he took up in 1989, in May 2010.
A medical examination of Bettencourt ordered by magistrates in June 2011 found that she was suffering from “mixed dementia” and “a moderately severe stage [sic] of Alzheimer’s disease” and that the “slow degenerative cerebral process” began in 2007.
In a statement given to police on July 23rd 2010, Bonnefoy said Banier, now aged 66, had "destroyed" the Bettencourt family, humiliated Liliane Bettencourt by calling her "a bitch", and that his "arrogant" behaviour included urinating over plants at the Bettencourt home.
Bonnefoy first gave the recordings, amounting to about 20 hours and contained on 28 CD-roms, to Liliane Bettencourt’s daughter, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, in May 2010. Bettencourt-Meyers, Liliane’s only child, was at the time involved in a legal battle against Parisian socialite, celebrity photographer and novelist François-Marie Banier after lodging a complaint against him in 2007 for having taken advantage of her mother’s mental frailty to gain from her what a subsequent police investigation found to be almost 1 billion euros-worth of gifts, including cash, artworks and insurance policies, over a ten-year period.
Bettencourt-Meyers sent the recordings to the police on June 10th 2010. Mediapart, which had gained a copy of the recordings, began publishing the contents on June 16th. It chose to publish only those extracts that it decided were in the public interest, excluding conversations that were of a strictly private nature.
In the statement he gave to the Bordeaux magistrates during their investigations, Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel said: “We are journalists, we carry out investigations and we publish information on the basis of the facts that we have obtained. We learnt that in the framework of an affair that we did not interest ourselves in - because it was a private affair - information of public interest had been produced. We went about enquiring into this information and we then did our job of verification and selection.”
“I insist again, these recordings revealed immense pressure that was put on a judicial case by the executive powers, and placed directly in question the impartiality of the Nanterre public prosecutor,” Plenel continued. “This is an essential point in the decision we took to make this information public.When, in a democracy, there is a breach of the proper functioning of justice, the press must play its role. We are obviously aware of the requirement upon us to respect a person’s personal privacy. That is why, over several days, we took the time to select which information should be made public.”
The Bordeaux magistrates’ decision to send the journalists for trial follows a controversial ruling against Mediapart and Le Point in July by the Versailles court of appeal which found the secretly recorded conversations to be of a strictly private nature, overturning previous judgments that Mediapart had published material that was in the public interest.
It authorized an application by Bettencourt, her now disgraced former wealth manager Patrice de Maistre and François-Marie Banier for the removal from this website of all citations from the conversations and which came into effect on July 22nd after Maistre served notice for the censorship. More than 70 articles have been de-published.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Mediapart has lodged a legal appeal against the censorship order which is unprecedented in France since the creation of the internet. In a separate move, Mediapart and more than 40 other media titles launched a public appeal and petition against it, which has to date received the support of more than 55,000 signatories (see the appeal and petition, which is still open, here). The petition was handed over to French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti in late July.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
The judicial investigations into the wide-ranging Bettencourt affair have resulted in six separate cases, including that of breach of privacy concerning the publication of the so-called 'butler tapes'. The principle one of these concerns the alleged abuse of frailty of Liliane Bettencourt and illegal political funding, in which 12 people are placed under investigation, including former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and who are now awaiting a final decision by the investigating magistrates as to whether they will be sent for trial.
They are:
Nicolas Sarkozy: The former French president (2007-2012) placed under investigation for “abuse of frailty” on March 21st 2013.
Éric Woerth: Former budget minister (later labour minister) under Nicolas Sarkozy, treasurer of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, and treasurer of Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party. He was placed under investigation on February 8th 2012 for “passive influence peddling” and, on March 9th 2012, for “receiving” illicit cash payments from Patrice de Maistre.
Patrice de Maistre: Former wealth and investment manager for Liliane Bettencourt, placed under investigation on December 15th 2011 for “abuse of weakness”, “conspiring in breach of trust”, “aggravated fraud” and “money laundering”. He was later additionally placed under investigation on March 22nd 2012 for “misuse of company assets”, and also for “active influence peddling”, on June 12th 2012. He notably spent 88 days in preventive detention, beginning March 22nd 2012.
Pascal Wilhelm: A tax lawyer who succeeded Patrice de Maistre as wealth and investment manager for Liliane Bettencourt, placed under investigation for “abuse of frailty” on June 13th 2012 and also, on February 11th 2013, for “fraud”.
Alain Thurin: Liliane Bettencourt’s former nurse was placed under investigation on July 11th 2012 for “abuse of frailty”.
Fabrice Goguel: Liliane Bettencourt’s former chief tax lawyer was placed under investigation on September 6th 2012 for “abuse of frailty”, “fraud” and “breach of trust” all in connection with his management of the judicial and fiscal arrangements concerning the ownership of Bettencourt’s Seychelles island, d’Arros.
Carlos Cassina Vejarano: A former administrator of d’Arros, he was placed under investigation on October 26th 2012 for “abuse of frailty” and “fraud”.
Patrice Bonduelle: A notary (solicitor) who served Liliane Bettencourt between 2010 and 2011 was placed under investigation in November 2012 for “conspiring in abuse of frailty”.
Jean-Michel Normand: A notary (solicitor) who served Liliane Bettencourt when her will was modified and gifts offered in favour of François-Marie Banier, was placed under investigation on January 15th 2013.
Stéphane Courbit: A reality TV show and online gambling entrepreneur and a client of Pascal Wilhelm, whose company LOV received an investment of more than 143 million euros from Liliane Bettencourt in May 2011. He was placed under investigation on February 19th 2013 “fraud” and “receiving the proceeds of abuse of frailty”.
Under French law, the examining magistrates in charge of a criminal investigation have the ultimate power to decide who should stand trial for offences which, in the magistrates’ opinion, there is “grave or concordant” evidence that they committed. However, the public prosecutor’s office also has a say in the procedure, and makes its own recommendations over who, among those placed under investigation, should or should not, stand trial.
The public prosecutor’s office in Bordeaux, where the cases are managed, has recommended that the cases against Sarkozy, Woerth, Courbit, Bonduelle, Wilhelm and Thurin should be dismissed. It is now for the three magistrates in charge of the investigation to decide the final outcome. Meanwhile, an appeal by the six which challenges the legal validity of their placement under investigation is to be heard by a court in Bordeaux on September 24th.
In a second case, the three judges on July 4th overruled the prosecutor’s recommendation to dismiss charges against Éric Woerth and Patrice de Maistre for influence peddling, and they will now stand trial at a date to be announced.
In a third related case, magistrate Isabelle Prévost-Desprez was placed under investigation in July 2012 for “violation of professional secrecy” for allegedly passing on to two journalists from Le Monde classified information from her early investigation into the Bettencourt affair. The Bordeaux public prosecutor’s office in June recommended she should stand trial.
In the trail of that, a fifth case involves a lawsuit by Le monde against former public prosecutor Philippe Courroye and his deputy, Marie-Christine Daubigney, for their illegal consultation of the phone records of its journalists investigating the Bettencourt affair. After the two magistrates were placed under investigation, the case against them was overturned by two appeal court rulings, the latest in June. However, further legal procedures engaged by Le Monde could still lead to a new case being opened agaisnt Courroye and Daubigney.
Finally, the largest magistrates’ union, the USM, filed a lawsuit on April 9th against Member of Parliament for the conservative UMP party, Hervé Guaino, a former advisor to Sarkozy when the latter was president, for his alleged “insulting a magistrate” and “the discrediting of an act or decision” of justice. This referred to Guaino’s highly controversial public outburst against Bordeaux magistrate Jean-Michel Gentil after he placed Sarkozy under investigation in March, who Guaino said had “dishonoured the justice system” and had “dirtied France live and in front of the world”. That case is currently the subject of a preliminary investigation by the Paris public prosecutor’s office. If pursued, Guaino faces a maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment and separate fines of 15,000 euros and 7,500 euros respectively.
-------------------------
English version by Graham Tearse