Damning documents implicating Nicolas Sarkozy in illegal cash payments mysteriously disappeared before being 'found' again yesterday by police.
Extracts from the accounting reocrds, published in the newspaper Liberation, suggested that Lilliane Bettencourt, France's richest woman, gave 100,000 euros to man named only as 'Monsieur'.
Detectives in Paris have launched an investigation into illegal cash payments allegedly made to Nicolas Sarkozy by L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt
A prosecution source said: 'They're now at the centre of the criminal investigation.
'Mrs Bettencourt thought she had lost them, but they were then found again by detectives.'
Mrs Bettencourt, the billionaire L'Oreal heiress, is said to have provided Mr Sarkozy with 'manila envelopes stuffed with cash' following dinner parties at her mansion house in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where Mr Sarkozy was once mayor and still keeps a home.
Claire Thibout, a 52-year-old accountant who helped manage Mrs Bettencourt's fortune, has told detectives she personally collected some of the money from a cashpoint.
Liberation today writes: 'It's necessary to go back to the month of January 2007 to find confirmation of the claims of the accountant, which refer to important withdrawals designated for political financing.
'On January 26, 100,000 euros were handed over to an unnamed man', reports the newspaper, publishing a ledger which mysteriously marks the beneficiary as 'Monsieur'.
Front page news: Mr Sarkozy has said he is the victim of a smear campaign as the allegations have plunged him into a fresh crisis
Mrs Thibout's lawyer, Antoine Gillot, said: 'My client is categorical. When you take out 100,000 euros for Mrs Bettencourt, it's not because it's going to the hairdresser.'
Much of the money is thought to have come from Swiss accounts, which Mrs Bettencourt had not declared to the French tax authorities.
Mr Gillot said Mrs Thibout was under 'enormous pressure' and that police had travelled to the South of France to bring her back to Paris for further interviews.
LILIANE BETTENCOURT
* Mrs Bettencourt owns 31 per cent of L'Oreal and is worth an estimated £13billion.
* She is the only child of Eugene Schueller, the founder of the cosmetic giant.
* In 1950, she married French politician Andre Bettencourt and the couple have one daughter, Francoise, who is on L'Oreal's board of directors.
* Mrs Bettencourt claims to have lost money in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme.
* In December last year, her daughter launched a civil lawsuit to try to have Mrs Bettencourt declared legally irresponsible and placed under the authority of the court for spending too much money.
* Secret tape recordings emerged last month which allegedly reveal Mrs Bettencourt had undeclared holdings in the Seychelles and Switzerland.
She is now likely to be given the official status of a witness in the criminal investigation being coordinated by Nanterre prosecutors.
Mrs Bettencourt's lawyer, Georges Kiejman, meanwhile claimed that the accounting documents helped contradict Mrs Thibout's claims.
Pointing to a photocopy of the ledger on French TV, he said that 50,000 euros taken from a Paris bank on March 26 2007 did not end up in Mr Sarkozy's presidential election campaign coffers, as has been claimed.
Instead the money was clearly marked as having gone on 'food shopping' and to a 'bookbinder', said Mr Kiejman.
A furious Mr Sarkozy has denounced the allegations against him as 'libel that aims only to smear, without the slightest basis in reality'.
Mrs Thibout has also pointed to Eric Woerth, a senior minister and treasurer of Mr Sarkozy's UMP party, as being at the centre of the alleged corruption.
Mr Woerth, whose wife was a financial adviser to Mrs Bettencourt until she resigned last month, has resisted opposition calls to stand down.
He also denies all wrongdoing or any conflict of interest when he held parallel offices as party treasurer and, until March, budget minister.
'I did not receive a single euro illegally,' said Mr Woerth.
A recent opinion poll found that nearly two-thirds of the French public believe their political leaders are corrupt.
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