Was the world’s wealthiest woman—Liliane Bettencourt—heir to an estimated thirty-six-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, the victim of a con man? Or were her own family the real villains? This riveting narrative tells the real-life, shocking story behind the cause célèbre that has captivated both France and the world.
Liliane Bettencourt is the world’s richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at ninety-four, she’s embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? Thanks to an artist and photographer named François-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane’s daughter, Françoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It’s all become Europe’s biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more.
Written by Tom Sancton, a Vanity Fair contributor and former Time correspondent currently living in France, The Bettencourt Affair is part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; part business narrative of a glamorous global company with past Nazi connections; and part character-driven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart.
From the Hardcover edition.
Liliane Bettencourt is the world’s richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at ninety-four, she’s embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? Thanks to an artist and photographer named François-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane’s daughter, Françoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It’s all become Europe’s biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more.
Written by Tom Sancton, a Vanity Fair contributor and former Time correspondent currently living in France, The Bettencourt Affair is part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; part business narrative of a glamorous global company with past Nazi connections; and part character-driven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart.
From the Hardcover edition.
