The 518-page transcript of Bonnefoy’s recordings provided investigators with a mother lode of information. But it’s the fly-on-the-wall audio version that most dramatically penetrates the intimacy of the second-floor study where Liliane Bettencourt met with her advisers. More than the words themselves, it is the sounds that bring the scene to life. The clink of glasses when refreshments are served. The opening and closing of doors. The butler’s footsteps. The yapping of Liliane’s dog. The swish of turning pages as she reads over documents. The obsequious voice of Patrice de Maistre, alternately cajoling, flattering, and dominating the heiress. Kiejman’s raspy baritone hurling ironic barbs at Françoise Meyers and the “little judge” Prévost-Desprez. Lawyer Fabrice Goguel’s dry monotone explaining his convoluted legal maneuvers to the baffled heiress.
But it is Liliane’s voice that is most striking—not so much the sound of it as the confusion it often conveys. Not only does she misunderstand much of what is said to her—she is, after all, very deaf—but even when things are repeated and explained, she often has trouble grasping and remembering. She can even be heard snoring on occasion. But there are also moments of lucidity and fierce determination. She clearly voices her resentment of her daughter and son-in-law, her concerns for the future of L’Oréal, her impatience over the drawn-out legal tug-of-war, and, yes, her fear of the demanding Monsieur Banier, even as she confirms her deep attachment to him. But the master manipulator in these sessions is not Banier, who appears only twice on the recordings: It is Patrice de Maistre.
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De Maistre was at the center of Sarkozy’s involvement in the case, the thing that caused the biggest sensation when the recordings were made public. It was de Maistre who first took Liliane to see the president on November 5, 2008, and thereafter maintained regular contacts with the Élysée. To hear him brag about it to his employer, one would think he had a dedicated hotline into the office of Sarkozy’s judicial aide, Patrick Ouart. “I’m going to the Élysée this afternoon because Sarkozy’s adviser called me this morning,” he told Liliane on June 12, 2009. “He’s following the affair . . . they are doing what they can.”
On July 21, de Maistre gave the heiress some good news: “Sarkozy’s adviser, whom I see regularly on your behalf . . . told me the prosecutor Courroye will announce on September 3 that your daughter’s suit is not legitimate, and so he will drop the investigation.” Not only was this advance tip-off to a party involved in a private suit highly improper; the fact that the prosecutor had apparently informed Sarkozy’s office of his intentions pointed to an illegal collusion between the executive and the judicial branches. To many of the president’s critics it seemed clear that he himself was pulling the strings—a charge that Sarkozy, Courroye, and Ouart deny.
De Maistre’s optimism proved premature. Courroye did in fact terminate his preliminary investigation on September 22, 2009, but by that time, as we have seen, Metzner had craftily circumvented the foot-dragging prosecutor with his direct citation of Banier before Prévost-Desprez’s court. Ouart continued to communicate about the case with de Maistre, but he admitted that the Élysée had less control over the independent-minded Nanterre judge. On April 23, 2010, de Maistre told Madame Bettencourt that “[Ouart] wanted to see me the other day and he told me, ‘Monsieur de Maistre, the president continues to follow this case very closely. We can’t do much more for you at the first trial, but we can tell you that in the appeals court, if you lose, we know the prosecutor very, very well.’” In other words, according to de Maistre, Ouart was suggesting that the Élysée could use its influence to quash the suit on appeal.
The appearance of high-level tampering in the case was bad enough for Sarkozy, but the revelations concerning de Maistre’s cozy relationship with the budget minister at the time, Éric Woerth, who awarded him the Légion d’honneur in January 2008, heightened the president’s political embarrassment. In September 2007 de Maistre had recruited Woerth’s wife, Florence, as an investment adviser for Clymène, the family holding company that managed Liliane Bettencourt’s stock dividends. De Maistre told the heiress that he hired her at the request of his “friend Éric Woerth.” “Who’s that?” asked Liliane. “He’s our budget minister,” de Maistre replied, baldly explaining the logic behind the hire: “He’s the one who oversees your taxes, so I thought it wasn’t a dumb thing to do.”
After a time, though, de Maistre began to have regrets—not because of the questionable ethics of the relationship, but because he found Florence Woerth “pushy” and “tiresome.” Finally, on April 23, 2010, he told Liliane that he was planning to let Madame Woerth go because the press had gotten wind of the relationship and was asking embarrassing questions. “Since you’re the richest woman in France, the fact that you employ a minister’s wife, the newspapers say everything is mixed up,” he explained, adding that Éric Woerth had originally “asked” him to hire her. Now the only solution was to let Florence Woerth go with a hefty severance “because it’s too dangerous.” (She was, in fact, allowed to resign two months later.)
As if that whiff of nepotism and back scratching were not enough, Woerth also had financial relations with de Maistre in his capacity as treasurer of Sarkozy’s reelection campaign and of his UMP party. On the recording of March 4, 2010, de Maistre is heard instructing Liliane Bettencourt to sign checks of €7,500 each, the maximum legal limit, to Éric Woerth, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a UMP regional candidate. While Liliane signs the checks, only vaguely aware of what it’s all about, de Maistre tells her: “You see, it’s only 7,500, it’s not very expensive. At this moment, we need friends.” It is true that the legal limit, paid by traceable checks, did not amount to much in relation to the Bettencourt fortune. But that did not preclude the possibility of much larger gifts in cash-stuffed envelopes.
Another recorded reference to Woerth presents him, ironically, as an official who has complicated de Maistre’s job by passing a law, effective January 1, 2010, requiring Swiss banks to report the accounts of French citizens. As de Maistre explains to the heiress in November 2009, she has three secret accounts in Switzerland, which he plans to transfer out of the country in a blatant and illegal tax-evasion scheme. “I am arranging to send [the funds] to another country, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Uruguay,” he says. “Because if we bring this money back to France, it will be very complicated.”
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Ceaselessly attempting to extend his power and influence over the heiress, de Maistre convinced her to name him, along with Banier’s childhood friend Dr. Gilles Brücker, as her future “protectors” in the event she was declared incompetent. His stated aim was to prevent Liliane’s daughter from gaining legal control over her and her assets, but the result would have been to make de Maistre the ultimate arbiter of her fortune, while Brücker would have overseen her personal affairs. Throughout the discussion, recorded on September 7, 2009, Liliane’s confusion is all too evident:
De Maistre: I have several things to discuss with you. The first is the protection mandate. You know what I’m talking about?
Liliane Bettencourt:Not really. A mandate? For me? . . .
De Maistre: The mandate states that, if you are not well in the future, you ask two people to protect you. . . . My thought is that, if you’re not well one day, your daughter will immediately try to put you under guardianship. And that’s what must not happen, in my view.
Liliane Bettencourt: That’s obvious.
De Maistre: I have given this a lot of thought, and I say it’s in your interest to sign as quickly as possible.
Two days later, Madame Bettencourt’s notary, Jean-Michel Normand, arrives with the finished document for her to sign. She has no memory of the previous discussion:
Liliane Bettencourt: I sign at the bottom?
Normand: No, wait. I need to give you a word of explanation after all. We talked about this act in June. I presented it to you, you read through it, I gave you explanations, you asked questions . . . and so today, we regularize it.
[He gives the document to the heiress. Sound of pages turning, background conversation.]
Liliane Bettencourt: I can’t go on like this, it takes too much time! I need to talk about it at the same time. You understand? . . . I prefer to take more time. In any case, I can’t just sign like that.
Liliane’s hesitations notwithstanding, and in the absence of a medical certificate on her mental soundness, the act was signed and notarized on September 23, 2009. In its final form, only de Maistre was designated as her future protector, with no further mention of Brücker. If a court had ruled Madame Bettencourt incompetent at that point, Patrice de Maistre would not only have managed her fortune but would have taken her seat on L’Oréal’s board of directors and spoken for her as the company’s principal shareholder.
The most stunning sign of de Maistre’s manipulation, and the thing he will never live down, was his request that Madame Bettencourt buy him a sailboat as a “gift.” In his most unctuous voice, he describes it as a “magnificent boat,” a 21-meter, single-mast sloop dubbed the Edelweiss (which happened to be the name of Eugène Schueller’s craft). He returns to the subject several times, describing the immense pleasure he gets from sailing. “When I cut off the onboard engine, I am happy in this simple, limited space,” he gushes. “It’s a simple life on the open sea.” Recalling her sailing days with her father, Madame Bettencourt tells him: “Oh yes, I understand. I adore the open air.”
The money, he says, must come from one of her secret Swiss bank accounts to avoid detection:
De Maistre: Do you still want to offer me a gift? If you want to do something, it has to be in Switzerland, not here. And it would allow me to buy the boat of my dreams. . . .
Liliane Bettencourt: Very well. How do we do it?
De Maistre: I have to see how I can get the money sent here.
Liliane Bettencourt: You want to bring the money from Switzerland?
De Maistre: Right . . . I don’t want anyone to know about it because you know I have signed something making me your [future] protector, so I can’t do that. So it has to be a hand-to-hand thing. I don’t want your daughter or anyone else to know about it.
De Maistre won Madame Bettencourt’s assent, but finally gave up on the boat purchase because of the risk of tax and legal complications. The previous year, however, he had talked Liliane into giving him €5 million—“for my old age”—and paying an additional €3.03 million in gift taxes. At the time, he was making €900,000 a year as director of the family holding companies, Thétys and Clymène—a fee that he had bumped up by 60 percent by pressuring Liliane to sign a revised contract after the first three years. The recordings thus underscored a situation in which de Maistre was taking advantage of the heiress—not on the same scale as Banier but in a way that, to some observers, appeared to make the two men objective allies in an effort to “pluck the feathers off the old girl,” as one lawyer put it. Not that there was any camaraderie between the two men. Au contraire: De Maistre is heard on the recordings calling Banier an “imbecile” who “throws oil on the fire,” while Banier, in private, is scathing in his comments about the financier.
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As for Banier, though he himself appears only twice on the recordings—once on the phone and once in person—he is very much present as a subject of discussion. And almost always as a problem that Liliane’s advisers must deal with. The most telling thing about these passages is the mixture of fear and affection he inspires in Liliane, who is extremely foggy about what she has already given him and apparently doesn’t even remember naming him as her legal heir in December 2007. De Maistre broached this delicate subject in a conversation on March 4, 2010:
De Maistre: Your notary tells me you have made wills for certain people to whom you want to give money. For the rest, you have named Banier your légataire universel [legal heir]—that is, he will have all the rest.
Liliane Bettencourt: Légataire universel?
De Maistre: Yes.
Liliane Bettencourt: Well, he can start by striking that out.
De Maistre: Right. We agree.
Liliane Bettencourt: But at the same time, we have to keep him in the will.
De Maistre: . . . I think you have already given enough to Banier.
Liliane Bettencourt: Yes, but don’t overlook one little detail, that is, when he wants something, and especially when you’re facing difficulties, as I have several times . . .
De Maistre: Banier says: ‘I agree . . . but this will must be changed’ . . .
Eight days later, Normand, the notary, urges Madame Bettencourt to change her will, saying that even Banier agrees it was a folly to name him as her heir and wants that designation revoked. Liliane’s confusion on the subject is one of the most glaring indications of her vulnerability at this point:
Normand: Banier wants you to change the dispositions you made in his favor. He prefers not to appear.
Liliane Bettencourt: As what?
Normand: As your légataire universel.
Liliane Bettencourt: . . . How much did I leave to François-Marie? What proportion?
Normand: Légataire universel.
Liliane Bettencourt: Which means?
Normand: Everything.
Liliane Bettencourt: Ah, no!
Normand: Yes. That’s what you told me . . .
Liliane Bettencourt: Well, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know it any longer. . . .
Liliane’s remarks about Banier reveal a mix of admiration and affection on the one hand, and irritation, even fear, over his excessive behavior on the other. On October 29, 2009, for example, Liliane tells de Maistre, “[Banier] is brilliant, but he doesn’t know how to behave. . . . He has to bite.” The financial adviser replies, “Yes, like a hunting dog, he has to catch something . . . and he bites hard. . . . There are very few people he really likes.” On April 7, 2010, the heiress tells de Maistre that Banier “is someone that I like very much, he is very intelligent, but I just hope he doesn’t kill me.” It is clear from the context that she doesn’t mean that literally; she means he sometimes wears her out with his incessant talk and hyperactivity. “He becomes too demanding,” she says, “but he takes me to meet some very interesting people, and I just can’t resist.” De Maistre replies: “He doesn’t know how to stop.” Liliane adds: “He would devour everything. He has incredible stamina.”
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Some of the most convoluted discussions concerned the Île d’Arros, the private island in the Seychelles that the Bettencourts had bought from the nephew of the shah of Iran in 1998. At some point, as noted, Liliane apparently decided to give the island to Banier. In 2006, Liliane’s lawyer, Fabrice Goguel, drew up papers transferring ownership to a Lichtenstein-based foundation whose “beneficiaries” were Banier and three medical associations run by Banier’s friend Gilles Brücker and Brücker’s partner, Caroline Katlama. Meanwhile, the island’s manager, Carlos Vejarano, started hitting up Liliane for what looked like hush money because the island was never declared to French tax authorities. Concerning all these complications, Liliane remembered and understood almost nothing. The subject came up repeatedly in the recorded conversations, but this exchange of May 11, 2010, is typical:
Liliane Bettencourt: What island?
De Maistre: D’Arros. A priori it’s going to go to François-Marie Banier one day. It’s your decision. . . .
Liliane Bettencourt: But he’s not ashamed to wind up with this island?
De Maistre: Yes, but you’re the one who wanted that. You’re the one who signed the papers.
Liliane Bettencourt: For François-Marie?
De Maistre: Yes. Through this foundation . . .
Liliane Bettencourt: Wait a minute. The foundation owns the island?
De Maistre: The foundation is the proprietor of the island.
Liliane Bettencourt: And the foundation belongs to whom?
De Maistre: Officially, to no one.
Liliane Bettencourt: And unofficially?
De Maistre: Unofficially to Banier.
Liliane Bettencourt: . . . I wanted to give him an island?
De Maistre: You decided to give him that.
This discussion is interrupted by Banier’s arrival in the study. De Maistre had summoned him in hopes of straightening out the ownership mess surrounding d’Arros and getting the Lichtenstein foundation to finance its upkeep. Banier drags his feet, blames the problems on his Swiss lawyer, then abruptly changes the subject to the lawsuit against him. He wants de Maistre to provide him with details of Liliane’s professional and social activities in 2006 in order to prove that she was lucid at that time. “For 2006, you have to find something,” Banier tells de Maistre, sotto voce so Liliane can’t hear. “She risks being put under court guardianship based on 2006.”
That was the year of Liliane’s accident at Formentor, at age eighty-four, and the period of mental confusion that followed. Banier’s accusers would later pounce on this statement in an attempt to show that he was aware of her mental deficiencies dating from that time. Banier claims, on the contrary, that her active schedule proved that she was lucid, and that he was merely encouraging de Maistre to document that fact. For the moment, though, that legal debate still lay in the future.
Liliane, who had dozed off, suddenly woke up at this point and asked what they were talking about. Banier sought to reassure her. “No, I was just saying things will turn out fine, Liliane. Because in 2006 you saw many people. You just had some orientation problems like anyone can have. And that means strictly nothing.” Earlier in the same discussion, he had told Liliane that her “breathtaking” correspondence with him between 2003 and 2007 would prove her lucidity: “With your letters, thanks to your ear, we’ll win the trial, because you write so marvelously well that the reader is bowled over.”
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Banier’s arrival in the office on May 11, 2010, was the thing the butler was hoping for: It was only after this session that Bonnefoy ended his yearlong eavesdropping and handed the recordings over to Françoise Meyers. Was it worth the wait? By themselves, certainly, his recorded words were not enough to convict Banier, but they demonstrated several important points: that he appeared to be aware of Liliane’s mental lapses in 2006, a time when he benefited from substantial donations; that he was a participant, if indirectly, in the tax-evasion scheme surrounding d’Arros; and that he had a way of dealing with Liliane using excessive language that tended to support the notion that he sought to influence her through cajolery and flattery.
Beyond Banier’s own words, the recordings made it clear that Liliane was confused and vulnerable to manipulation by those around her. Bonnefoy’s CDs thus constituted a key turning point.
The recordings not only provided fodder for Prévost-Desprez’s investigation, which focused exclusively on the charges against Banier; they also offered an opening for prosecutor Courroye to get back into the action. Though he had dropped his investigation of Banier in September 2009, he now opened a spate of new preliminary investigations. In addition to pursuing Bonnefoy for invasion of privacy, the new probes included publication of the illicit recordings, influence peddling (de Maistre’s hiring of Madame Woerth and his Légion d’honneur medal), tax fraud (concerning the Swiss accounts and the undeclared Île d’Arros), and illegal political financing. For good measure, Courroye attempted to nip Prévost-Desprez’s investigation in the bud, but his motion was rejected by the Versailles appeals court. Thus the prosecutor and the judge pursued their rival probes in tandem, using the same Financial Brigade detectives and often interrogating the same witnesses.
What might seem like excessive zeal on Courroye’s part, or an effort to muddy the waters for his rival Prévost-Desprez, might also have been motivated by a desire to prove to his numerous critics that he was not out to protect his friend Sarkozy after all. “If [Sarkozy] had been spattered by illegal money payments during the campaign, he would have been treated like anyone else,” says Courroye. “I couldn’t have stopped the machine.” Another possible interpretation is that, by carrying out these investigations himself, he was preventing the cases from being assigned to investigative magistrates who might conduct independent probes with unpredictable results.
Seen from the Élysée’s perspective, though, Courroye’s sudden judicial activism was most worrisome. The president’s erstwhile ally now seemed to be wandering off the reservation. “At that point, everything spun out of control and nobody could do anything about it,” says Patrick Ouart. So far out of control, in fact, that the press was soon talking about a French Watergate, and that Sarkozy, once out of office, would find himself under formal investigation.