Bettencourt chauffeur adds to Sarkozy campaign fund allegations

InIn an exclusive interview with Mediapart, a former chauffeur to L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and her late husband André has added to allegations concerning the financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential election campaign.

In July this year, former Bettencourt accountant Claire Thibout told Mediapart how, in 2007, she had been asked by Bettencourt's wealth manager, Patrice de Maistre, to prepare 150,000 euros in cash which he intended to give, illicitly, to M. Sarkozy's campaign fund manager and current labour minister Eric Woerth. The presidential elections were held in May, 2007.

Thibout, employed by the Bettencourts between 1995 and 2008, also spoke of "regular" visits by M. Sarkozy to their mansion home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb close to Paris where the current president served as mayor between 1983 and 2002. "Everyone in the household knew that Sarkozy also came to see the Bettencourts to receive money," she told Mediapart.

That interview had the effect of a political bombshell. The former Bettencourt accountant's lawyer, Antoine Gillot, denounced a subsequent campaign to

"dirty" and "discredit" his client who he said was "targeted" by a series of intensive police interrogations following the publication of the interview. Those interrogations were ordered by public prosecutor Philippe Courroye, a political appointee whose hierarchical superior is ultimately the justice minister.

Thibout's disclosures, (which she repeated during an interview on French television current affairs programme, 'Complément d'Enquête', screened on public channel France 2, September 20th), have been partially backed-up by other evidence in police possession, and notably the secret diaries of François-Marie Banier, the socialite and celebrity photographer whose relationship with Liliane Bettencourt, during which he received almost one billion euros in gifts, sparked the scandal.

In his diaries dated during the spring of 2007, Banier noted a conversation in which he reported the L'Oréal billionaire as saying: "De Maistre tells me that Sarkozy is asking for more money."

'Sarkozy asked Monsieur-Madame for a little money'

Dominique Gautier was employed between 1994 and 2004 as a chauffeur for Liliane Bettencourt and her husband André, who died in November 2007, Mediapart first spoke to him in July this year, following the interview with Claire Thibout. He described her "as someone who tells the truth". Questioned further about her allegations of cash payments to fund Sarkozy's election campaign , he replied then: "To answer you, to give a clear answer, I would have had to see [something]. But I didn't see, I can say nothing."

Since that July interview, Mediapart's continuing investigations have included studying the complete rushes of a recorded interview Gautier gave to French television channel TF1 on June 19th. The recording was for the current affairs programme '7 à 8', which was broadcast on June 27^th.

The rushes included an intriguing comment by Gautier that was never broadcast in the '7 à 8' programme, which focussed on the role of François-Marie Banier.: "I found out that Nicolas Sarkozy had come to ask Monsieur-Madame for a little money but, well…, I don't know at all how much. I was told about it. She's deceased now, it was Nicole Berger, who was very, very close to Monsieur and Madame, who had been the housekeeper for 30 years," the former chauffeur said.

Contacted by Mediapart last week by telephone, Gautier accepted to be interviewed further about the conversation with Nicole Berger, who died in September 2008.

Berger was housekeeper to the Bettencourts for 30 years, from the early 1960s until she retired in the early 1990s. "She looked after the clothes side for Madame above all, the purchase of tableware, all that was needed for the household," explained Gautier. "Nicole Berger was someone very reliable, very devoted to Madame, very devoted to Monsieur."

'I am sure she told me the truth, it can't be any other way'

"I arrived in 1994, she had already left, but she came back regularly [to the Bettencourt house], that's when we became friends," Gautier continued. "We went shopping together. She continued to come around out of friendship, once every two months."

"She looked after small shopping tasks for Monsieur, little sewing jobs that nobody wanted to know about, for example Mme. Bettencourt's bathing caps, and took meals with the secretarial team […...] She never stopped going there, she became friends with Mme Bettencourt. Nicole had spent more than 30 years at her side, there was a complicity which meant that Mme. Bettencourt confided some things to her," he said.

"She told me that M. Sarkozy had come to pick up money at M. and Mme. Bettencourt's [...…] It was right in the middle of the election campaign."

"For her to have told me that M. Sarkozy came certainly to ask for some help, it means that someone told her, but not from among the staff, rather Monsieur or Madame."

Gautier insisted that Nicole Berger had said that Nicolas Sarkozy "came to ask for money".

Asked when that conversation took place, Gautier answered: "It was end of 2006, or the beginning of 2007, I don't know. You know, it's difficult to remember because we telephoned each other every Sunday, she told me that one Sunday afternoon when I called her, but I'd place it more like beginning of 2007."

He told Mediapart that at the time of the conversation with Berger in which Sarkozy's name was mentioned, he remembered that he had immediately thought of the election campaign. "Yes, absolutely, I had twigged that […...] It was during the election campaign," he said.

Mediapart asked why he had not spoken of the conversation to either the police or to Mediapart when we first interviewed him in July.

"Ah, no, I didn't talk about it to the police." he began. "When you see how Madame Thibout has now been treated, I don't want to go down the same route."

"I do not want to be re-questioned by the financial [police] brigade to talk about things that I have been told but have not been able to check. I had confidence and a lot of affection for Nicole [...…] I am sure she told me the truth, it can't be any other way, but when you see the direction in which Madame Thibout has gone.…"

Significant cash withdrawals

Dominique Gautier readily admits that there are no other witnesses to back up his recollections of a conversation about another conversation, which demands they be treated with caution.

Judge Isabelle Prévost-Desprez is in charge of investigating the case brought against François-Marie Banier by Liliane Bettencourt's daughter, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, who accuses Banier of receiving almost one billion euros from Liliane by exploiting the 88 year-old matriarch's mental frailty. In a statement given to Prévost-Desprez by Claire Thibout on July 16^th, the former Bettencourt accountant said she had delivered 50,000 euros for Liliane's wealth manager Patrice de Maistre on January 18^th, 2007. That date matches the period when Gautier believed it most likely that he had held the conversation with Berger in which Nicolas Sarkozy was mentioned.

Thibout's diary contained an entry written by her dated January 18^th, 2007, which read: "Appointment Madame Bettencourt to give envelope who will give it to Patrice [sic]". Another entry, dated the following day, January 19^th, read: "Patrice and treasurer".

Five days earlier, Nicolas Sarkozy had been officially designated as presidential candidate for the conservative Right UMP party.

In the diaries of Patrice de Maistre, also seized by police, he noted a "coffee" meeting with the then-Sarkozy campaign fund manager Eric Woerth. Both the now-labour minister and Patrice de Maistre deny that cash changed hands.

Furthermore, the Bettencourt accounts books kept by Claire Thibout during her 13 years of service for the L'Oréal family show that, between the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, significant sums of cash were withdrawn from the Bettencourt bank account. There was no recorded justification written against these large withdrawals, unlike all day-to-day spending accounts. The January 2007 accounts that she recorded can be consulted by clicking on the document below (in French only).

François-Marie Banier, whose diaries recorded Liliane Bettencourt as saying "De Maistre tells me that Sarkozy is asking for more money", gave a statement to police that "these are the words she said to me, but I don't know if they are true." He added that she "did not say whether it was for Neuilly [where Nicolas Sarkozy was formerly mayor], for his campaign or for something else."

English version: Graham Tearse