Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been cleared of soliciting campaign cash from L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, France’s richest woman. The accusations against Sarkozy had been comprehensive: Bettencourt’s former accountant, Claire Thibout, had claimed some €150,000 was passed to Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party in the presidential run-up in 2007.
Sarkozy was placed under investigation for “abuse of weakness” of Bettencourt, who is now 91 and suffers from dementia, earlier in the year. “It’s unimaginable that [Sarkozy] could abuse the weakness of a lady who is the age of his mother,” Sarkozy’s wife and ex supermodel Carla Bruni said earlier in the year, defending her husband.
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