French President Sarkozy Hits Back Against Rumors

Rumors about the private life of French President Nicolas Sarkozy are quickly become a state affair.
French President Sarkozy Hits Back Against Rumors
French President Nicolas Sarkozy (C) and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
4/6/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/sarrah98060037.jpg" alt="French President Nicolas Sarkozy (C) and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)" title="French President Nicolas Sarkozy (C) and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1821370"/></a>
French President Nicolas Sarkozy (C) and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
PARIS—Rumors about the private life of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, former top model and singer Carla Bruni, are quickly become a state affair, with the presidential spokesman calling them a “plot” and a complaint now being filed with French police.

On April 6, French police were asked by Paris public prosecutor to investigate the origin of rumors that first appeared on March 10 on a blog hosted by Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

The complaint was filed by Hachette Filipacchi Associates (HFA) group, which owns Journal du Dimanche, for “unauthorized insertion of data in an information system” that they deemed to be “detrimental to the company’s image and to its credibility.”

The French media has speculated that Sarkozy is behind HFA’s complaint, a charge his office denies.

Two managers of the Web site have already been fired for repeating the rumors that allege infidelity between Sarkozy and Bruni. The French press as a whole did not publicize the rumors, but the international media did, and did so on a large scale.

President Sarkozy, who first ignored the rumors, apparently changed his stance when he was asked about them by a journalist during a press conference in London on March 12.

“You apparently don’t know that the schedule of a president is tight,” answered Sarkozy. “I don’t have a second, not even half a second to lose with such flights of fancy.”

On the same day, State Secretary Chantal Jouanno who was also implicated in the affair, told Liberation newspaper that the rumor was “ ignominious, because it is an abuse made against my honor and that of my family.”

Was President Sarkozy Framed?


Sarkozy’s media adviser Pierre Charon cranked up the heat on the scandal in an April 3 interview with Rue89 Web site saying, “This ignominy is a declaration of war. We will go to the end so that this never happens again. As it is often said, fear has to switch sides.”

Charon hypothesized further that there could be “an organized plot with financial transactions backstage.”

“The fact that such rumors have been spread in U.K, Germany, and Switzerland can lead us to think so, at a time when France is preparing to, in 2011, assume the G20 presidency,” he said.

One name that keeps surfacing in the French media is former Minister of Justice Rachida Dati, who according to Le Journal du Dimanche, both Sarkozy and the national secret services suspect as being behind the so-called plot.

In a press release, Dati said she was “indignant against allegations by some press services that she could be involved in any way in the absurd and inacceptable rumors of the presidential couple’s private life.”