The affair was thrust back into the spotlight less than a year after the mother and daughter declared a cease-fire in their long-running tussle.
A French appeals court turned down a request by Liliane Bettencourt to have her temporary guardianship suspended or structurally altered.
The 89-year-old L’Oréal heiress — through lawyer Jean-René Farthouat — asked a judge in the appeals court of Versailles, France, to make her grandson Jean-Victor Meyers provisionally her sole guardian.
Just four days before her 89th birthday, Liliane Bettencourt, France’s wealthiest woman, was placed under the guardianship of her daughter and grandsons and is no longer in charge of her own purse strings.
Bettencourt asked her lawyer Jean-René Farthouat to revoke the accord she and her daughter, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, reached on Dec. 6, in which they agreed to abandon all legal proceedings Bettencourt Meyers had initiated in the Bettencourt affair, among other points.
French daily Libération published an interview with Claire Thibout, Liliane Bettencourt’s former accountant, in which she reiterated that in January 2007 Patrice de Maistre, then the L’Oréal heiress’ financial advisor, asked her to withdraw 150,000 euros, or $204,887 at current exchange, in cash.
The petition called for Nicolas Sarkozy to institute a “special contribution” from the superwealthy to ease the bulging public debt that has roiled markets.
On June 30, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers asked a guardianship judge in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie to revoke lawyer Pascal Wilhelm’s mandate to handle Liliane Bettencourt’s affairs.
Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the daughter of L’Oréal’s largest individual shareholder, Liliane Bettencourt, and her sons reportedly contacted the guardianship judge in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie on June 7 to grant 88-year-old Bettencourt a measure of judicial protection.