Posted on 07/20/2010 10:08:01 PM PDT by Cincinna
An aging heiress. An angry daughter. A society photographer. A renegade butler and an embittered accountant. Secret tapes. A famous company with a nasty past and long political connections. An unpopular president and a cabinet minister with a taste for money, and tales of illegal cash donations in envelopes.
This romantic stew is known as the “Bettencourt affair,” after the elderly heiress of the L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt, 87. What began as a fierce family fight, with her daughter charging that Mrs. Bettencourt’s entourage has been manipulating her to steal her fortune, has shaken the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
The affair has captivated France even as it enters the long summer holiday, with daily headlines, detentions and constant leaks. Mr. Sarkozy’s sometimes clumsy efforts to contain the scandal are similar to BP’s in the gulf — the flow of crude appears contained but the problem is far from over.
His approval ratings, already low from France’s economic problems, have fallen further with the Bettencourt skullduggery.
While Mr. Sarkozy himself seems insulated so far from charges of illegality, his labor minister, Éric Woerth, remains subject to investigations involving illegal political contributions and tax evasion. Mr. Woerth was budget minister, in charge of tax collection, until March, while also working as the treasurer of the ruling party, the Union for a Popular Movement, for the last eight years. He has quit, on Mr. Sarkozy’s orders, effective Aug. 1.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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The Left has tried to place Sarko in the middle of this affair. It doesn’t seem to be working, because it just isn’t true.
It seems to me this is a greedy daughter fighting for control of the family fortune, The beauty company, l’Otreal, was created by Mme Bettencourts husband and his parents. She is considered to be the richest woman in France.
If I were Mme B, I would take my company, and my money, and get out of France with its’ confiscatory taxes. Sarko mentioned this in his TV interview last week. He reminded the French that companie like l’Oreal create jobs, promote French products and pay taxes. Going after them, and trying to destroy them, serves no purpose.
Should the daughter be unconcerned when her elderly mother is enriching what seems to be a gigolo?
From Wiki
Bettencourt was born in Paris, France, the only child of Eugène Schueller, a French Jew,[citation needed] and the founder of L’Oréal, one of the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty companies. Her mother died in 1927 when Liliane was 5 years old, and she formed a close bond with her father, who never remarried.[2] At the age of 15, she joined her father’s company as an apprentice, mixing cosmetics and labelling bottles of shampoo.[3][4]
In 1950, she married French politician André Bettencourt, who served as a cabinet minister in French governments of the 1960s and 1970s and rose to become deputy chairman of L’Oréal. In Bettencourt had been a member of La Cagoule, a violent French fascist group that Liliane’s father had funded and supported in the 1930s and that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. After the war, Mr Bettencourt, like other members of La Cagoule, was given refuge at L’Oréal where he was able to successfully sanitise his past.[5] Eventually, the Bettencourts settled in an Arte Moderne mansion built in 1951 on rue de Delabordère in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.[6] They had one daughter, Françoise, who was born on 10 July 1953.
In 1957, Liliane Bettencourt inherited the L’Oréal fortune when her father died, becoming the principal shareholder of L’Oréal. In 1963, the company went public, although Ms Bettencourt continued to own a majority stake. In 1974, she exchanged almost half of her stake for a three per cent. (3%) stake in Nestlé S.A.[7]
Thanks for the very interesting information.
Having read a little about this case elsewhere, I agree. It seems that she gave the gigolo an island and doesn’t remember doing it, or why.
I had a friend whose widowed mother was taken advantage of by Lyndon Larouche’s gang of thieves in the 1990s. She managed to liquidate most of the family fortune right into the pockets of Mr. Larouche before her children caught on. The LaRouchies would come to visit and show political movies to this woman. They stayed all day and well into the evening, preventing her from eating, or resting. They wouldn’t leave until she’d written another check. She was too polite to throw them out.
You don’t see to many stories with renegade butlers these days.
This guy Francois-Marie Banier is an operator.
He seems to have become a multi-millionaire just by receiving gifts from members of high society - largely in the form of artwork.
He lives with his actor boyfriend and hangs out with Johnny Depp and other celebrities.
That implies something about Johnny Depp that his performance in "Pirates of the Caribbean" has led me to suspect ...
Thanks Cincinna. What, hasn’t the leftist press managed to connect Italy’s Berlusconi as well? ;’)
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