The Bettencourt Affair

June 15, 2017
A juicy chronicle of France's richest scandal.As the daughter of L'Oreal founder Eugene Schueller, Liliane Bettencourt (b. 1922) is the wealthiest woman in the world--wealthy enough, in fact, to have lost nearly 25 million euros in Bernie Madoff's scheme. While former Time Paris bureau chief Sancton (Song for My Fathers, 2010, etc.) tells the story of Bettencourt's daughter's suit against Liliane's dear friend Francois-Marie Banier, he also provides an eye-opening look into the French judicial system. Based on Napoleonic code, it is a system that seems made to delay final decisions as cases wend their ways through the different court systems. Francoise Meyers brought the case against Banier for abus de faiblesse, or exploitation of weakness, in 2007, just after the onset of Liliane's mental confusion. Francoise was a talented author and musician but never pleased Liliane. Her mother, nearly deaf, enjoyed Banier's company and was uncharacteristically generous to him. She financed his artistic activities and gave him real estate and financial contracts for millions, not to mention the occasional check for 100,000 or 200,000 euros. Her gifts were extremely lavish, by some estimates totaling over 1 billion euros, considerable for a woman well known as a penny pincher. Banier was already a successful artist and photographer when he met Liliane, but he was also an abused child always searching for a replacement mother. What he gave her was liberation from the formal life she led. He was handsome, quirky, and a great conversationalist. Her husband, Andre, was warned about her gifts, but he decreed that it was her money to do with as she pleased, a stance that echoed the attitudes of her financial advisers and notary at first. Andre served in successive governments, due for the most part not to talent but to small brown envelopes handed to candidates. A well-researched, crisply written, and entertaining story of family, greed, wealth, and the complex relations among them.

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Starred review from June 15, 2017

Expanding upon a 2010 Vanity Fair article introducing the Bettencourt scandal to an American audience, journalist and author Sancton (Song For My Fathers) accords France's epic family drama the book-length expose it thoroughly deserves. As "The French Company of Inoffensive Hair Dyes," Eugene Schueller founded what would become French beauty giant L'Oreal in 1909. A century later his daughter Liliane Bettencourt was one of the world's wealthiest. Her friendship with eccentric younger artist Francois-Marie Banier, whom she showered with expensive gifts, led her daughter Francoise to open a lawsuit alleging elder abuse. What started as a family affair quickly turned into an "affair of state" that reached then President Nicolas Sarkozy with allegations of campaign finance fraud regarding donations received from the Bettencourts. With impeccable research, Sancton takes readers through Bettencourt family history, from L'Oreal's humble beginnings and continuing to document political upheaval in France during the last century. The years of legal proceedings are presented with their subsequent unexpected impact on the French presidency. VERDICT There is no comparable work on the Bettencourt scandal, only interviews and articles, making this highly recommended and pleasurable read a mix of luring tabloid fare and professionally researched courtroom and political drama.--Jessica Bushore, Xenia, OH

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