World's richest woman and L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt dies at 94
Liliane Bettencourt, the L'Oréal heiress and the world's richest woman, has died.
Mrs Bettencourt passed away in the early hours of Thursday at the age of 94, her daughter Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers has announced.
"Liliane Bettencourt died this
night at home. She would have been 95 on October 21. My mother left
peacefully," Mrs Bettencourt-Meyers said in a statement.
Mrs Bettencourt was ranked the richest woman in the world with a fortune of $39.5 billion last year, making her the world's 14th richest person.
In a statement, L'Oréal chairman and CEO Jean-Paul Agon expressed his
condolences to the family and said: "We all had a deep admiration for
Liliane Bettencourt who has always watched over L'Oréal, the company and
its employees, and who was very attached to its success and
development.
"She personally contributed a lot to its success for very many years.
"A great woman of beauty has left us and we will never forget her."
In later life, she had been at the heart of a high-profile legal battle over whether she was in her right mind when she handed over almost €1 billion in artworks and life insurance to François-Marie Banier, a celebrity photographer.
In 2007, Mrs Bettencourt Meyers filed a criminal suit against Banier for abus de faiblesse (abuse of weakness), claiming that he had ruthlessly exploited her then 84-year-old mother's oncoming dementia. Mrs Meyers said she felt compelled to act when an eavesdropping chambermaid told her she had heard Banier asking to be adopted by Bettencourt.
In later life, she had been at the heart of a high-profile legal battle over whether she was in her right mind when she handed over almost €1 billion in artworks and life insurance to François-Marie Banier, a celebrity photographer.
In 2007, Mrs Bettencourt Meyers filed a criminal suit against Banier for abus de faiblesse (abuse of weakness), claiming that he had ruthlessly exploited her then 84-year-old mother's oncoming dementia. Mrs Meyers said she felt compelled to act when an eavesdropping chambermaid told her she had heard Banier asking to be adopted by Bettencourt.
The so-called Bettencourt Affair electrified France for a decade and seriously damaged the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Patrice
de Maistre, who managed Bettencourt's vast fortune, was accused of
getting her to hand over envelopes of cash to members of Mr Sarkozy's
right-wing UMP party during his 2007 presidential campaign.
The charges against Mr Sarkozy, who denied all wrongdoing, were subsequently dropped in October 2013 due to lack of evidence.
Secret tape recordings made by the Bettencourt butler revealed
conversations about donations in the tens of thousands and requests from
her entourage for financial gifts.
In May
2015, a French court found eight people guilty of taking advantage of
her dementia. Banier was sentenced to three years and ordered to pay
Bettencourt $172 million.
Banier and Mrs Bettencourt-Meyers recently came to an out of court agreement on ending further legal action.
Last year, an appeals court reduced his sentence to four years suspended and a €375,000 fine.
On Thursday, in the latest legal chapter in the long running series
of court battles, a Bordeaux judge acquitted five journalists of
"breaching the intimacy of the private life" of Mrs Bettencourt and
ruled that her former butler was "not penally responsible" for illegally
recording the late heiress because he did so to protect her.
Source: The Telegraph
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