France: Does the L’Oréal scandal taint Sarkozy?

It’s a scandal “that has shaken the French social, business, and political elite,” said Lizzy Davies in the London Guardian. French President Nicolas Sarkozy stands accused of accepting cash-stuffed envelopes from the richest woman in France, L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. The allegations surfaced because of a spat between Bettencourt and her daughter Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, who was incensed that her 87-year-old mother had given away possessions worth more than $1 billion—including a Picasso, a Matisse, and an entire island in the Seychelles—to society photographer François-Marie Banier, more than 20 years her junior. Françoise said her mother is senile and was preyed upon. Bettencourt retorted that her estranged daughter was “just jealous,” and she fired members of her staff who backed Françoise. They, in turn, have retaliated by leveling all sorts of accusations. The butler, it turned out, had been secretly taping Bettencourt’s conversations with her financial manager as he babbled about hiding assets. And her accountant described supposed payoffs to politicians, including Sarkozy. Last week, four people were arrested: Bettencourt’s financial manager, her photographer friend, her tax lawyer, and the manager of the Seychelles island.

Since the arrests involve only Bettencourt’s inner circle, Sarkozy appears to be in the clear, said John Lichfield in the London Independent. The butler’s tapes paint a picture of a befuddled old woman who doesn’t really know where her money is going. But Sarkozy is not implicated on the tapes, and the accountant who claimed the president took money from Bettencourt has recanted. The rest of Sarkozy’s government also has apparently been vindicated. Labor Minister Eric Woerth was under suspicion when it came out that his wife was working as an investment manager for Bettencourt while Woerth was investigating the heiress for tax evasion. But Woerth has been cleared of wrongdoing by an independent investigation. Still, the appearance of impropriety in the Woerth case has prompted Sarkozy to order a review of conflict-of-interest laws.

That’s not good enough, said Jean-Paul Pièrot in France’s L’Humanité. When the financial crisis hit, Sarkozy announced that he would crack down on corporate shenanigans and inject “morality” into capitalism. All the while, we now know, his own, right-wing party was intimately involved with L’Oréal, the cosmetics giant. And lest we forget, Bettencourt’s father, L’Oréal founder Andre Bettencourt, was a right-wing extremist who supported the fascist Vichy government during “France’s darkest days” of World War II. The family has been close to the Right ever since, funding Sarkozy’s party in legal and—perhaps—illegal ways.

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Revealing the gulf between the ordinary French and the elite may be this scandal’s enduring legacy, said Michel Pinçon in France’s Le Monde. The rich and their political allies constitute “a class unto itself, with its own customs, where each member is mobilized in defense of class interests.” Politicians and bankers dine together in fancy restaurants, tax lawyers and socialites hobnob with movie stars, and all of them belong to the same social clubs. “The Bettencourt affair has the merit of making visible a disturbing side of France that never would have emerged.”