The French government is being shaken by revelations by Claire Thibout, a former accountant to Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oréal fortune, that the ruling UMP party may have benefitted from cash donations to President Nicholas Sarkozy’s campaign in 2007. These allegations have now been partially retracted. Bettencourt is France’s richest woman.

Previously, it was revealed that the wife of Works Minister Eric Woerth had been advising Bettencourt on financial matters. Some of the €15 billion fortune found its way to Switzerland and may not have been properly declared. Eric Woerth is both works minister and treasurer of the UMP.

Woerth, formerly the budget minister in Sarkozy’s government, made chasing French tax evaders a priority and is key to the government’s pensions reform which is attempting to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 in an effort to reduce the French government’s recurrent budget deficit. He has been backed by Sarkozy, though two junior ministers were ousted this past weekend for ostentatious use of taxpayers’ money.

Links to other sites: BBC, Le Monde, Libération, Wall Street Journal

Posted by Sean Ecker on 8 July 2010 at 12:52 | permalink
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News story, GenevaLunch, 8 July 2010.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.