French court weighs whether to delay trial centering on L’Oreal heiress

Trial centering on France’s richest woman opens

NANTERRE, France — A French court was deciding Thursday whether to postpone a highly awaited trial into whether France’s richest woman was coerced into handing over €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in gifts to a friend.

A delay would give lawyers more time to study stunning new evidence: secret recordings by the butler of the heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune, recordings that have embroiled France’s political leadership.

The legal battle, which has captivated France, has pitted billionaire heiress Liliane Bettencourt against her only child. Her daughter, Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers, says a charming photographer manipulated her 87-year-old, mentally weak mother into giving him massive gifts.

In the trial, which opened Thursday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, celebrity photographer Francois-Marie Banier is accused of exploitation and risks three years of prison, a fine — and being ordered to give back the gifts.

Banier, who insists he did not take advantage of his older friend, looked relaxed as he arrived.

The younger Bettencourt says she just wants to protect her elderly mother. And the elder argues that she has her wits about her and can do whatever she wants with her fortune. Bettencourt is No. 17 on Forbes magazine’s list of the richest people worldwide, with a net worth of $20 billion.

Banier’s lawyer sought to delay the trial because of the one-time butler’s tapes, released this month to the media — he wants more time to study them. Banier lawyer Herve Temime said the butler “crossed an uncrossable line” by making the recordings of the heiress talking to her advisers and described the trial as “nauseating.”

The butler’s lawyer, Antoine Gillot, vouches for the recordings’ authenticity and says he hopes they will show Bettencourt “is in danger, that she is surrounded by people with no scruples.”

In the recordings, advisers speak to her as though to a child, and she is sometimes confused.

At one point, adviser Patrice de Maistre reminds Bettencourt that she signed over her private island in the Seychelles to her younger friend, Banier.

“I wanted to give him an island?” she asks, puzzled.

The tapes have also had serious political implications, too: Maistre was caught telling Bettencourt he hired Labor Minister Eric Woerth’s wife as an investment adviser because the minister asked him to. Florence Woerth has since resigned, and the couple have denied there was a conflict of interest.

Until March, Eric Woerth was budget minister, in charge of pursuing tax dodgers. Woerth has been strongly backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and the government all week has been sharply fending off attacks from the leftist opposition over the affair.

In the tapes, Bettencourt and Maistre also are heard discussing undeclared Swiss bank accounts. Maistre told Le Figaro newspaper this weekend that the heiress had €78 million ($97 million) in two foreign accounts, and he promised to get her affairs in order.