Breaking into French politics
French politics may be getting a little dirtier – or at least a bit more intrusive. James caught us all up recently on Bikinigate: paparazzi photos of French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal in her bikini on a beach near Cannes. Now comes the revelation that while Royal was vacationing, her family’s flat in Paris was ...
French politics may be getting a little dirtier - or at least a bit more intrusive. James caught us all up recently on Bikinigate: paparazzi photos of French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal in her bikini on a beach near Cannes. Now comes the revelation that while Royal was vacationing, her family's flat in Paris was ransacked - and not a thing was stolen. With the race to succeed Chirac next year heating up, Royal thinks supporters of her main rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, are behind the break-in.
Mme Royal, 52, said: “This was not a burglary, but an intrusion and a full-scale search of my home in which nothing was stolen. Everything was turned upside down, the cupboards were emptied.” Police said that the intruders had broken in through a window in the ground-floor flat and ripped the telephone wires out of the wall. …[Royal] added that she had asked for the security of the telephone lines to be checked, implying that they might have been tapped.
At least one police officer has played down the possibility that it was an official job, remarking:
When a secret service carries out a job, it doesn’t leave any trace behind, or it makes its intervention look like a burglary.”
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