L'Oreal Heiress Bettencourt Asks Court to Block Media Use of Butler's Tape

L’Oreal SA heiress Liliane Bettencourt asked a Paris court to block a news website’s use of recordings that sparked a political scandal and led police to seek to question a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government.

Bettencourt’s right to privacy trumps the freedom of the press claimed by the website, Mediapart, her lawyer told the Paris appeals court. A lower court was wrong to allow the recordings of conversations she had with friends and advisers to be used because of their news value, he said.

The right to privacy “is fundamental in French law,” Bettencourt’s lawyer Thierry Marembert said in court today. “These conversations were of a personal nature,” including several with another of her lawyers.

The recordings, made by Bettencourt’s former butler provided a window into the life of Europe’s richest woman and sparked a political storm over alleged campaign finance law violations, tax evasion and influence peddling touching both Sarkozy and Labor Minister Eric Woerth. Bettencourt is also seeking to block the magazine Le Point from publishing excerpts of the recordings.

Mediapart contends “that the information had a legitimate purpose,” said Jean-Pierre Mignard, a lawyer for the news site. Mediapart restricted its use of the tapes to issues of concern to French citizens, putting their use outside the protection of private life, he said.

Bettencourt’s Only Child

The tapes, made between May 2009 and May 2010, were turned over to Bettencourt’s only child, who gave them to police. They appeared on Mediapart in June, just before a trial over the daughter’s claims her mother was manipulated into giving away 1 billion euros ($1.28 billion) in gifts to a photographer friend.

“All France is talking about nothing but this,” said Renaud Le Gunehec, a lawyer for Le Point. The affair has provoked debate over issues like judicial reform, tax laws, and campaign finance, he said, validating the use of the recordings.

Bettencourt is joined in her suit by Patrice de Maistre, general director of Thethys SAS, the company set up by the Bettencourt family to manage their nearly 31 percent stake in L’Oreal, the cosmetics company founded by her father.

Dissemination of excerpts in which de Maistre asked Bettencourt to buy him a boat led to him “being condemned by public opinion,” said the financial advisor’s lawyer, Pascal Wilhelm, adding that using just snippets of the conversations was “intellectually dishonest” and “not journalism.”

70,000 Euros

Bettencourt and de Maistre asked the appeals court to order the removal of the transcripts, audio files and related stories and for 70,000 euros in damages.

The trial over Bettencourt’s daughter’s claims was postponed indefinitely to investigate the recordings on July 1. That same day the lower court in Paris ruled it would allow the recordings’ use, saying removing them “would restrain journalists’ ability to effectively fulfill their mission in an excessive and unjustified way.”

Sarkozy’s cabinet today approved the Nanterre prosecutor’s request to question Woerth. Woerth’s wife, Florence, was questioned today by police about her former work for de Maistre in counseling Bettencourt on financial matters. She quit last month after the tapes exposed her position to scrutiny for a possible conflict of interest, because of her husband’s former post overseeing tax policy.

An investigation was opened today into slander claims by Woerth over media reports alleging he improperly used his position to aid his wife, said a spokeswoman for the prosecutor in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where most of the related inquiries are being conducted.

The court will issue its decision July 23.

To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Smith in Paris at hsmith26@bloomberg.net

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