Five members of staff of the French presidential offices are being transferred after photos were published of French President François Hollande with actress Julie Gayet inside the Elysée Palace, officials said Friday, reports RFI.
Hollande’s affair with the actress was revealed by paparazzi photos in January but snaps of the couple on a private terrace of the presidential palace published last week appear to have been taken from within the Elysée itself.
The celebrity magazine Voici said the pictures it published of Hollande and actress Gayet sitting together had been taken secretly in October. Voici described the photos as a “tender moment... behind the walls of the Elysée,” where Gayet spends “several nights a week”.
The culprit has not yet been identified but police are convinced the pictures were taken by a member of the president’s personal staff on a mobile phone from within his private apartments, according to the French newspaper Libération.
The daily also said that four of the five staff had been given their jobs in the palace by Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, adding to suspicions that a mole is the source of embarrassing leaks that could benefit the former president who has re-election ambition.