Liliane Bettencourt, L’Oréal Heiress Vexed by Swindling Case, Is Dead at 94<br />In 2010, the family soap opera also exploded into a government scandal after tape recordings secretly made by the dowager’s butler, and accusations by a former family accountant, suggested<br />that Mrs. Bettencourt had kept $98 million in secret Swiss bank accounts, evaded taxes, given envelopes of cash to cabinet ministers and made illegal campaign contributions to Nicolas Sarkozy shortly before his election to the French presidency in 2007.<br />21, 2017<br />Liliane Bettencourt, the French heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics fortune and a family legacy of fascist associations, whose final years were vexed by allegations<br />that she had fallen under the sway of a younger man and given him $1.4 billion, died on Wednesday at her home in the Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine.<br />One quoted Mr. Banier telling investigators that he did not want the island anyway because of "the mosquitoes" and "the sharks." In 2012, the Seychelles government reported<br />that the Bettencourt family had sold the island to a Seychelles-registered conservation organization with ties to the Save Our Seas Foundation, a Swiss organization.<br />While she remained in the background most of her life, Mrs. Bettencourt had long tried to live down the stains of anti-Semitic activities<br />and Nazi associations by her father and husband before and during World War II: a well-documented record of propaganda writings and material support for fascist groups, some of whose followers found refuge after the war at L’Oréal.<br />In another twist, the police investigated allegations by Claire Thibout, described as a disgruntled former family accountant,<br />that Mrs. Bettencourt had given nearly $200,000 to President Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign through Éric Woerth, the labor minister and treasurer of the ruling political party.<br />Accused of "abus de faiblesse," or exploiting the old woman’s frailty, the photographer, François-Marie Banier, was bombarded at a trial in early 2015 by the testimony of maids, butlers, doctors<br />and others who called him the dominating manipulator of an overmedicated, disoriented woman.
