Vampire diaries, you too ? Does it bother you? It's not realistic enough... I have what you need in stock! There are vampires, devoted and servile werewolves with suicidal tendencies (but still CITIZENS), so-called "secret" agreements exciting the beggars who, usually, constitute the principal and daily meal of this vast world caste à big shotsISF, tax shield, consumption of various and varied goods, paid for by their daily sweat, embellished with other direct or indirect amusements. It is therefore, for once, such a relief to observe this fratricidal slaughter putting on the front of the stage the venal objectives of a completely mamonic attitude of certain servile and well-meaning actors, part of this well-educated French bourgeoisie, and just as old school, with a completely mathematical coldness, which surrounds the 3e Richest woman in the world...
Castes and "Elites" right-thinking international, radiant!... Who terrorize us and traumatize us even in our programs TVs and also allow themselves the luxury of displaying all their Babylonian splendor! And who moreover, whether Mr. Besancenot likes it, are not limited to Neuilly... This morning, I thank from the bottom of my heart, ONCE AGAIN, Médiapart for this generous post on the developments surrounding the Bettencourt affair, ACT 2..
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Faithful to my vocation as a monk copyist, I hasten however to relay their speech below. Attention, as usual... it moves.
Hitherto confined to a shadowy role in the tumult of the many aspects of the Bettencourt affair (family, political-financial, tax, etc.), the lawyer Pascal Wilhelm is today the main protagonist of the latest developments. file, like the photographer François-Marie Banier or the wealth manager Patrice de Maistre. And that's hardly to his advantage.
The decisive role of Me Wilhelm, new lawyer and "protector" of Liliane Bettencourt, in the contribution by the heiress of the L'Oréal group of 143 million euros to the producer Stéphane Courbit (see our révélations of Monday), has just made the case bounce back on both judicial and, concerning him, disciplinary grounds, because of the incredible conflict of interest in which the lawyer finds himself entangled.
To grasp the new challenges of the Bettencourt affair, season 2, Mediapart takes stock of a soap opera which, a year after its revelation, has clearly not finished delivering surprises.
- Lawyer, agent, protector: the impossible equation?
The question is posed: can one be both the "protector" of a fragile person and his agent in business? This is precisely the case of M.e Paschal Wilhelm. Not content with being Liliane Bettencourt's main lawyer after the departure of Georges Kiejman from the case, he has also been, since January, her "protector" under a so-called "future protection" mandate. That is to say the one who is supposed to ensure a kind of guardianship of Mme Bettencourt if she were to be declared unfit by medicine to manage her own affairs.
The referral this week by Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, the daughter of the billionaire old lady, to the guardianship judge of Courbevoie aims precisely to clarify this point. “Françoise Meyers did not request guardianship, but the opening of an investigation into the conditions for the execution of the protection mandate”, it is thus specified in the entourage of Mme Meyers.
She could even send the file to the public prosecutor's office - in this case that of Paris, where the lawyer has his office -, if she judges that the protector has in turn committed an "abuse of weakness" or a "breach of trust" to the detriment of the owner of L'Oréal whose interests he is, however, supposed to protect.
An embarrassing conflict of interest
What complicates the situation for Pascal Wilhelm is that, in the case of the investment operation of 143 million euros from the personal fortune of Liliane Bettencourt for the benefit of the activities of producer Stéphane Courbit, the lawyer is not only the advice of the heiress of L'Oréal.
He is also an agent for two other parties directly involved in the lucrative operation. Me Wilhelm is also the lawyer for Betclic, one of the companies of Stéphane Courbit, the beneficiary of the contribution, and that of Jean-Marie Messier, whose bank served as counsel in the present case.
Faced with what may be akin to a manifest conflict of interest, the president of the bar association, Jean Castelain, logically decided to open an ethics investigation into his colleague. One of its delegates, a member of the council, will have to submit a report to it, after having heard the person concerned and the complainants.
This report in hand, the President of the Bar will be able to close the case, pronounce a "paternal admonition" without gravity or, if necessary, open a disciplinary procedure.
But the case seems to be badly handled for the protector of Liliane Bettencourt. Because : “A lawyer cannot be the counsel, representative or defender of more than one client in the same case if there is a conflict between the interests of his clients”, clearly stipulates the national rules of procedure of the profession.
For his defense in the case of the Courbit operation, which ended on May 31, Pascal Wilhelm indicated, Thursday in the press, that he had informed one of the lawyers of the Bettencourt daughter and obtained his agreement. by email in March. “To say that Françoise Bettencourt has given her consent is staggering”, is indignant, however, a close, girl side.
“For there to be a real problem, the investment would have to be unfavorable, we are assured on the side of Me Wilhelm But the valuation is very favorable for her. The conditions for the outings are exceptional, the yield is excellent.” The grant of 143 million in question, however, absorbs the annual availability of Liliane Bettencourt – capped at 150 million – and also led her to request an extension of 30 million euros.
A long-shattered mother-daughter deal
A memorandum of understanding, concluded on December 6, 2010 in the form of a secret pact, signed the great public reconciliation of Liliane Bettencourt and her daughter after months of intimate heartbreak. This protocol provided for the withdrawal of all complaints from both parties, so as to put out the fire.
Thus, the complaints against François-Marie Banier, Patrice de Maistre, Fabrice Goguel were withdrawn by the girl's camp. Except that the mother's was not so diligent. “Only the privacy complaint has not been withdrawn, explained Pascal Wilhelm to Figaro. If she was not, it is because the clandestine recordings made at her home (by the former butler of Mme Bettencourt) are prejudicial to him: five procedures are based on these wiretaps...”
The reality is different. Claude Laplaud, the public prosecutor of Bordeaux, where the Bettencourt cases are now being investigated, confirmed on April 27, in a letter that Mediapart was able to consult, that he "had the only withdrawal of Françoise Meyers concerning the procedure initiated against François-Marie Banier".
“This withdrawal therefore does not affect the procedures open to the offices of Mr.month Ramonatxo and Noel and Mr. Gentil on the counts of witness tampering and theft, complicity, concealment”, wrote the prosecutor to Mr.e Antoine Gillot, the lawyer of Claire Thibout, the former accountant of Bettencourt at the origin of sensational revelations on a possible occult financing of the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, and of the butler Pascal Bonnefoy, author of the pirated recordings. Mme Thibout and Mr. Bonnefoy are reputed to be close to the Bettencourt daughter.
The procedure too
Last Monday, in front of the investigative chamber of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, the camp of the mother like that of the daughter seemed to agree to make a clean sweep of the clandestine recordings of the butler whose revelation by Mediapart , in June 2010, launched the Bettencourt case.
On the Françoise Meyers side, the (entire) nullity of the procedure was pleaded: the Nanterre prosecutor, Philippe Courroye, who initially inherited the file, could not, as he did, open a preliminary investigation for "invasion of privacy" without prior complaint from a victim.
The mother's lawyers, on the other hand, defended a Priority Question of Constitutionality (QPC) to raise the contradiction between article 427 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which establishes the freedom of evidence in criminal matters - and accepts the recording - and the constitutional principle of privacy.
In doing so, they revived the controversy on the merits, while opening a new deadline in the event of transmission of the QPC to the court, and, if necessary, to the Constitutional Council. “They postpone to Greek calends the question of the withdrawal of their complaints, comments on the girl's camp. The QPC is the proof that they did not want to apply the agreements”.
Sarkozy, Woerth and the species...
These new developments should not, however, make us forget the most sensitive aspect of the Bettencourt affair: politics. The one concerning Nicolas Sarkozy and a former flagship government minister, Eric Woerth.
For several months, three judges from Bordeaux have been investigating, on the one hand, possible influence peddling attributable to Mr. Woerth and, on the other hand, suspicions of hidden political financing with regard to the 2007 presidential campaign. The investigations, which have already given rise to searches (at the UMP or at Eric Woerth, for example), are taking place with the utmost discretion.
In the first case, justice tries to clarify the conditions of employment, at the end of 2007, of the wife of Eric Woerth within the company managing the fortune of Mme Bettencourt and the presentation, a few weeks later, in January 2008, of a Legion of Honor to the direct employer of Mme Woerth (Patrice de Maistre) from the very hands of her minister husband.
In the second case, there were first the declarations of the former accountant of the billionaire couple, Claire Thibout, about an illicit payment of 150.000 euros for the benefit of the electoral campaign of Mr. Sarkozy in 2007. Failing to be formally established – cash payments are generally unprovable and it is even their primary interest – the assertions of the ex-accountant were already supported by several elements even before the judges of Bordeaux inherited the case last November.
In her declarations to the judge of Nanterre Isabelle Prévost-Desprez (in July 2010), Claire Thibout had thus indicated that it was on January 18, 2007 that she had given part of the money (50.000 euros in cash) intended for fund Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential ambitions to Liliane Bettencourt's wealth manager, Patrice de Maistre.
However, in the diary of the ex-accountant, appears on the date indicated the following mention: "Meet Madame Bettencourt to give an envelope which will give to Patrice". And on the date of the next day, January 19, we can read this: “Patrice and Treasurer”. Namely, an appointment between Patrice de Maistre, the confidant of the billionaire, and Eric Woerth, treasurer of the campaign of Mr. Sarkozy.
The diaries of Patrice de Maistre seized by the police confirm the existence of a meeting on the morning of January 19 with Eric Woerth, for a "coffee". Was an envelope delivered that day? MM. Woerth and de Maistre both deny it.
The accounting books of the Bettencourt house, filled in by Claire Thibout during her thirteen years of activity in the service of the owner of L'Oréal, attest for their part, that between the end of 2006 and the beginning of the year 2007, large sums of money were withdrawn in cash without justification (contrary to all current expenses) from the Bettencourt accounts. According to the ex-accountant, part of these sums was precisely intended to finance hand in hand French politicians.
© DR
To these elements, which give credence to the word of the former accountant, we must add the discovery by the investigators of the financial brigade of the diaries of photographer François-Marie Banier. The protege of Liliane Bettencourt noted there certain events which he witnessed, the confidences of which he was the recipient, on the telephone or in the mansion of the billionaire, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
It turns out that in one of his notebooks, Mr. Banier notably reported, in the spring of 2007, "comments made" by the owner of L'Oréal according to which Nicolas Sarkozy had received, in the midst of the presidential campaign, money of the Bettencourt spouses. The exact sentence: “De Maistre tells me that Sarkozy is still asking for money. If I say yes, how can I be sure that he gives it well?
Twice in recent weeks, Judge Jean-Michel Gentil has called as a witness Mme Bettencourt to ask him questions about this part of the file. But, twice, the billionaire old lady claimed a poor state of health for not responding to the judge's summons.
- The embarrassing check from Liliane Bettencourt to Stéphane Courbit
- Bettencourt case: the prosecution opposes the cancellation of the procedure
- Police at the home of Liliane Bettencourt
- Bettencourt case: recordings stolen from Mediapart
- Bettencourt: complete file to understand
source: Mediapart
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