L’Oreal probe returns to haunt Sarkozy

Corruption allegations swirling around France’s richest woman, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, returned yesterday to haunt President Nicolas Sarkozy, seven months before his re-election battle.

Ms Bettencourt is at the centre of a series of long-standing, overlapping legal inquiries, including one into claims she once showered leading right-wing figures with envelopes stuffed with undeclared campaign donations.

President Sarkozy, who will run for a second term in April, has always strongly denied he or his previous campaigns tookillegal L’Oreal cash, but allegations have resurfaced in a new book by two investigative journalists.

In Sarkozy m’a tuer, Le Monde reporters Gerard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme interview investigative magistrate Isabelle Prevost-Desprez, who was formerly charged with investigating part of the complex scandal.

According to the judge, her team questioned a nurse working at the elderly Bettencourt’s mansion who mentioned to a bailiff that she had personally seen Mr Sarkozy accepting a cash-stuffed envelope but then refused to testify.

Mr Sarkozy’s office described the new claim as “without basis, mendacious and scandalous” and his ally Prime Minister Francois Fillon attacked the media for repeating what he insisted was “detestable and disgusting rumour”.

According to the book, she told the authors that the nurse “told my bailiff after her formal interview, ‘I saw money given to Sarkozy but I couldn’t say so during my deposition’.”

It has long been alleged that Mr Sarkozy’s campaign and his centre-right UMP benefited from unusual cash donations during the 2007 election campaign. These have always been fiercely denied, but continue to hang over the party.