Sarkozy accused of Watergate-style tricks to muzzle press

In a scandal having many parallels with the Watergate affair, President Nicolas Sarkozy was accused by France's most prestigious newspaper yesterday of illegally using the counter-intelligence service to muzzle the press.

Le Monde said that the President's office had deployed France's equivalent of MI5 like a "cabinet noir", or dirty-tricks operation, to uncover the source of leaks in the L'Oreal family feud and political financing scandal.

The newspaper said that it had started a legal action against "persons unknown" at the Elysée Palace for breaking a century-old French law which guarantees the secrecy of journalistic sources.

Le Monde said that the French security service, the DCRI, had tracked down a senior figure in the Justice Minister's office as the source of embarrassing leaks to the newspaper in July on the so-called "Bettencourt-Woerth" affair.

The official, a long-term aide of the Justice Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, had been forced out of his post and sent on a minor legal mission to French Guyana.

The Elysée Palace flatly denied the accusation. It said "the presidency of the Republic has never given the slightest instruction to any (state) service" to investigate leaks in the L'Oreal affair. Other newspapers had already reported, however, that the official, David Senat, had been punished for leaking witness interviews in the Bettencourt scandal to the press.

Mr Sarkozy's government was also accused yesterday of acting illegally in another great French political soap opera of the summer: the clampdown on Roma immigrants from Eastern Europe. From President Sarkozy's viewpoint, the "Mondegate" saga may prove to be the more damaging of the two.

In a front-page editorial yesterday, Le Monde said that the Elysée had tried to cover its embarrassment in the Bettencourt affair - and to intimidate the press - by misusing the counter-intelligence services whose mission was to "protect the state". Le Monde also said that the Elysée had broken a law protecting press sources which had been strengthened by Mr Sarkozy's government less than a year ago.

The alleged witch-hunt for sources of embarrassing leaks in the Bettencourt affair implies that Mr Sarkozy has been far more rattled by the scandal than he likes to admit. The saga began with a family feud over the alleged abuse of France's wealthiest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, 87, who gave A1bn in cash and art works to a playboy photographer who befriended her.

Secret tapes of her conversations with advisers and the photographer, Francois-Marie Banier, were handed to the police and leaked to the press in July. The tapes also implied that Ms Bettencourt, the largest shareholder in the cosmetics giant L'Oreal, had been sheltered from possible charges of tax evasion by her links with the Sarkozy government.

It appeared from the tapes that Mr Sarkozy's campaign treasurer in 2007, Eric Woerth - now Employment Minister - had sought campaign donations from Ms Bettencourt. Mr Woerth had also sought a job for his wife.

A former accountant for Ms Bettencourt then told the press, and police, that the billionairess had given illicitly large donations to Mr Woerth for the Sarkozy campaign.

Both President Sarkozy and Mr Woerth rejected the allegations. A preliminary investigation was begun by the public prosecutor for the suburbs west of Paris.

Ms Bettencourt's financial manager, Patrice de Maistre, was interviewed by investigators and contradicted parts of Mr Woerth's story. Details of his confidential testimony appeared on the front page of Le Monde the following day, 15 July.

The leaks so infuriated Mr Sarkozy, Le Monde said yesterday, that the Elysée ordered an investigation by the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Interieur.

This is a new umbrella internal security organisation created by Mr Sarkozy two years ago because, he claimed, its predecessors had become too "politicised".

Sources in the DCRI told Le Monde that they checked the telephone records of all potential leakers inside government until they found the trace of a call from the reporter who wrote the story. The DCRI sources insisted that they had acted as part of their "mission to protect the state".

Opposition politicians said that this was a clear abuse of power. Aurelie Filippetti of the Parti Socialiste said that the misuse of security agencies and the muddling of state interests and personal interests were the hallmarks of the Watergate affair which brought down President Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

Ms Filippetti said: "This is a new scandal worthy of Watergate, which we could perhaps call 'Woerthgate'."

Watergate, she might have recalled, was also a battle of wills between a right-wing President and a "liberal" newspaper.

- THE INDEPENDENT