pandora’s box
by Douglas Messerli
Tom Sancton The Bettencourt Affair: The World’s Richest Woman and the Scandal That
Rocked Paris (New York: Dutton, 2017)
Tom Sancton’s new book, The Bettencourt Affair, covers a long
and protracted scandal and trial that may not be well known to US audiences,
but shook the country of France from about 2007 to its final court-room
decisions just this past year. Elements of the court fights have still to be
settled.
Banier began his career by publishing his first fiction, Les Résidences Secondaires in 1969 and
performed in several important films beginning in the 1980s, including Robert
Bresson’s L’Argent (an interesting
coincidence since money would become the central factor of his life), three
films by Éric Rohmer, and a film by Olivier Assayas as late as 2008. Gay,
impulsive, erudite, and somewhat of a clown, Banier clearly brought out
something in the L’Oreal heiress that her previously ordered life had never before
permitted, and, as Sancton puts it, she literally fell in love with him—if not
in the sexual sense, clearly in a spiritual one.
Together the pair dined in famous Parisian restaurants, attended art
galleries, shopped, and, as she later insisted, met far more interesting people
that her usual social set had ever permitted. Some of her friends suggested, to
describe their relationship, the fact that despite her money and Art Deco
mansion, Liliane had never done anything creative in her life; Banier was a
workaholic artist, if a bit of a dilettante, charming her and everyone around
her. One need only to think back to Gregory La Cava’s 1936 film My Man Godfrey to comprehend that for
Liliane, Banier represented a protégé similar
to what the wealthy women of that film both sought.
Banier, who had close relationships with other celebrities such as
Salvador Dalí, Vladimir Horowitz, Samuel Beckett, Isabelle Adjani, and Johnny
Depp, gave her time, laughter, long letters, and access to a large community of
interesting notables, even accompanying her with Liliane’s husband André, at
times, to their other houses and her island. He visited her and/or they dined
together nearly every day.
In return, she began by giving him the apartment across from his own,
valuable artworks by Picasso, Monet, and others; she gave him large insurance
policies worth millions, even offering him her island, and, cash outlays, and
not only to him but to his current lover, Martin Le Barrois d’Orgeval, nephew
of his former lover, Pascal Greggory. In all, some estimates suggest that
Liliane, over the years, paid nearly 1 billion euros to Banier and his
associates.
Things might have gone along quite swimmingly, with Banier providing the
intellectual entertainment for the elderly heiress, and she paying what for
her, quite obviously, as a small remuneration for his efforts, had it not been
that in 2006 she had a light coma and severe dehydration, after which she
became over-medicated, and mentally confused, on some days not even knowing
where she was in her own home. At moments she would return to complete
lucidity, but both staff members and some of the L’Oreal officers quickly
became concerned about her mental health.
It appears that only the accountant at L’Oreal, Claire Thibout, knew the
exact amounts that Liliane was paying Banier and others, and she was worried
and angry about what she knew,
Françoise, who had a cold relationship with her mother, had long hated
Banier and, perhaps in her mind, saw him as a purposeful displacement of her in
her mother’s heart. What Sancton does make clear is that Liliane did not enjoy
the company of her daughter, her husband, and one of their sons. Clearly, they
had none the joie de vivre and wit
that Banier possessed. And it was for that reason and others, despite her own
wealth, that Françoise determined to cut her mother off from Banier and get
back some of the money she had given him.
What she couldn’t know is that in filing her suit against François-Marie
Banier she would open up a real-life Pandora’s Box that would reveal that
Liliane’s father, the founder and genius behind L’Oreal, was a Nazi
collaborator; that André, Liliane’s husband, had been a member of La Cagoule, a
violent French fascist-leaning and anti-communist group, and had written
several articles for a Nazi propaganda organ; that her parents had secret Swiss
Bank accounts, and had failed to report taxes concerning the purchase of their
island; and that her suit against Banier would sweep up governmental figures
from then French-President Nicolas Sarkozy (the affair virtually ended his
political career), his Budget and Labor Minister, Eric Woerth, Liliane’s former
financier, Patrice de Maistre, André’s loyal valet, and Pascal Bonnefoy, who
had secretly taped many conversations between Liliane and others; and would
bring about the testimony of many of Bettencourt maids, creating a kind of
upstairs-downstairs stir of gossip. Two people involved in the scandal and
trials, including Françoise’s attorney, Olivier Metzner and Commissaire Noël
Robin, who supervised some of the Bettencourt investigations, committed suicide
before the trials were over. Alain Thurin, Liliane’s trusted nurse, one of the
defendants, attempted to hang himself in a forest near Brétigny-sur-Orge; he
lay in coma for days, but eventually recovered. One of the early judges was
also brought to trial for possibly collaborating with the Sarkozy administration.
And by the end, Françoise, herself would be under investigation for bribing
Claire Thibout.
Accusations about a plot to have Lilianne adopt Banier and the discovery
that she had left her entire estate to him upon her death added spice to the
already stew of speculations. The public couldn’t get enough.
In the end, Banier was found guilty, but suspended from serving any time
in prison, while being fined 375,000 euros. The state took away one of his
apartments and his 140-million-euro insurance policy, but wiped out the 158
million euro in civil damages. D’Orgeval’s prison sentence was also suspended
and was fined 150,000 euros.
Both sides proclaimed to have won, but neither actually did, with
Banier, despite retaining most of his wealth, shunned by friends as a gigolo, a
guru, and worse names. Françoise, who
now controls her mother’s wealth and her visitors, was surely now seen as a
petty mean-spirited daughter. The case against her is still to be decided.
And Liliane, now well into full Alzheimer’s does not even have her once
pleasant memories of her time with Banier, having forgotten the names of nearly
everyone she ever knew. When asked by the judge Jean-Michel Gentil, did she
recall Banier, her answer was: “I don’t walk to talk about him.” When Gentil
asked did he abuse her, she responded: “Surely a bit, but I don’t care. I’m not
going to get sick over it. I don’t have time to lose over that. I don’t deny
his faults, but I was a victim of my own enthusiasms. He took money from me, I
don’t give a damn. I accept the consequences of my mistakes. I’m not going to
cry about it.”
Liliane is now what daughter describes as “serene,” having lost touch
today with nearly everyone, her family included as well as her memories. She is
kept under close scrutiny, a situation she dreaded during most of her life, by
her unloved daughter.
Although Sancton pulls no punches when it comes to Banier’s inability to
say no to Liliane’s lavish gifts—he is described by many of his friends as a 5-year-old
in a grown man’s body—it is clear that the figure he most admires in this sad
family tragedy is François-Marie, now at age 70, sitting in his palatial
retreat, Le Patron, in the south of France, with memories of his continued
admiration for his real-life patron, maybe, in fact, her very last lover.
Los Angeles, August 31, 2017
Reprinted from Rain Taxi (Winter 2017)
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