L’Oreal heiress adviser detained

2010-07-15 14:07

Paris - The financial adviser to the heiress to the L'Oreal cosmetics fortune was detained for questioning on Thursday along with three others, amid a scandal that has embroiled the French government.

Patrice de Maistre, financial adviser to 87-year-old Liliane Bettencourt, was being questioned on Thursday by investigators, according to an official in the prosecutor's office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

The others held include celebrity photographer Francois-Marie Banier, accused by Bettencourt's daughter of bilking Bettencourt out of €1bn in gifts.

Bettencourt's former tax lawyer Fabrice Goguel and the manager of an island in the Seychelles that she owns, Carles Vejarano, were also being held for questioning, the official said.

The official was not authorised to be publicly named because of judicial policy.

Centre of political storm

They were being questioned as part of a preliminary investigation into Bettencourt's finances, including suspicions of tax evasion, the official said.

Bettencourt is France's richest woman and one of the country's biggest taxpayers.

Bettencourt's finances have been at the centre of a political storm that includes claims that she gave money illegally to President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative party during his 2007 election campaign.

Sarkozy and his party's treasurer have denied the claims.

Bettencourt is seeking an independent audit of her finances to defend herself against accusations that she is being manipulated by friends and advisers.

Bettencourt, who is in a legal dispute with her daughter, said in a statement Wednesday that she ordered an audit of three companies that handle her finances to show that she knows "perfectly how to manage" her family's affairs.
 

- SAPA