Bettencourt money manager taken into custody

PARIS - The finance scandal involving French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a dramatic turn Thursday when police took into custody three people with links to L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the daily Le Monde reported on its online edition.

Among them is the man who manages Bettencourt’s immense wealth, Patrice de Maistre, who is alleged to have given the treasurer of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign, Eric Woerth, an illegal donation of $190,000.

Woerth is currently labour minister and has strenuously denied the allegations, which were made by Bettencourt’s former accountant. On Monday, Sarkozy defended Woerth on national television as “an honest man… a man who has my entire trust”.

In addition to Maistre, police have also taken into custody Bettencourt’s former financial attorney, Fabrice Goguel, and her close friend Francois-Marie Banier, a well-known photographer of the rich and famous.

Banier is accused of having taken advantage of Bettencourt’s alleged feebleness to manipulate her into giving him some one billion euros (about $1.2 billion) in gifts, such as cash and life insurance policies.