BBC News Europe
May 28th, 2015
Bettencourt case: Eight guilty of exploiting L’Oreal heiress. A French court has found eight people guilty of exploiting 92-year-old L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, one of the world’s richest people.
Among those convicted was photographer Francois-Marie Banier, given three years in prison and ordered to pay €158 million ($170 million) in damages. The verdict brings to an end a long-running case that began with a feud between Mrs Bettencourt and daughter.
In 2007, Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers filed charges against Banier, who had become a close companion of her mother.
Mrs Bettencourt had lavished the photographer with gifts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including artworks by Picasso and Matisse. She even made him her sole heir – although this was later revoked. At the time Mrs Bettencourt said she was a free woman, and her daughter would just have to accept it.
