Political fallout from Bettencourt lawsuit

A former bookkeeper in Liliane Bettencourt’s household claimed Bettencourt had contributed 150,000 euros in cash to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign,

the

Financial Times

reported.

Bettencourt is the daughter of the founder of cosmetics company L’Oréal.

[T]he latest allegations are particularly serious because under French law, individual political donations must not exceed 7,500 euros a year. [The bookkeeper] also claims that Mr. Sarkozy regularly received envelopes of cash when he came to dine at the Bettencourt mansion in Neuilly, an upmarket suburb of Paris where the president was mayor between 1988 and 2002.

An analysis in the

FT

‘s “World View” column

said the allegations “risk destabilizing the company” in addition to raising a government scandal. Bettencourt is involved in a legal battle with daughter, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, who alleges that her mother’s companion, François-Marie Banier, bilked Bettencourt out of nearly 1 billion euros. Allegations that Bettencourt’s fortune may have avoided scrutiny by the tax authorities because of her political connections have surfaced as a result of the lawsuit. The “World View” analysis said:

So far, Mrs. Bettencourt and her daughter at least seem to agree on one issue. They both claim to be committed to L’Oréal and have no intention of parting with control. But in the current poisonous climate, there are no guarantees that control will not ultimately change and that one or other of the Bettencourts decides to sell out. In turn, L’Oréal’s other dominant shareholder, the Swiss food multinational Nestlé, must be watching developments with discomfort.

(Source:

Financial Times,

July 6, 2010.)