There have also been claims of Secret Service wiretaps on the mobile phones of a Le Monde investigative reporter and the co-author of a new book titled Sarko Killed Me .

The book is compiled of interviews with 27 personalities – ex-ministers, civil servants, television presenters, MPs, a number of journalists – who claim presidential displeasure cost them their career, reputation, or simply the favour they once enjoyed at the Elysée.

Prominent among them is an investigating magistrate, Isabelle Prévost-Desprez, who was removed from the Bettencourt case.

She tells of accusations, from two witnesses, that Liliane Bettencourt once gave Nicolas Sarkozy cash in a brown paper envelope – but says those were relayed outside of a formal interrogation, and therefore she did not include them in the record of her own official inquiry. (The one named witness, a former nurse working for Mrs Bettencourt, denied all yesterday.)

Source: Telegraph.co.uk