Lawyers for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, model Carla Bruni, said that the couple is looking to seek legal action against an adviser who had taken audio recordings of them without their knowledge during the 2012 election campaign. Reuters said that Patrick Buisson, who is part of the couple's inner circle, recorded talks between the the conservative leader and his entourage. The news agency said that the recorded talks had caused an uproar in opposition UMP weeks before the election partly due to the revelations it held.
In a statement, lawyers Thierry Herzog and Richard Malka said, "Mr Nicolas Sarkozy and Mrs Carla Bruni-Sarkozy cannot accept that remarks made in private were recorded and published without their consent. (They) have decided to prosecute, through an emergency proceeding soon to be filed with the Paris Grand Instance Court, the recording and publication of their conversations. Protecting the secrecy of private conversations is ... one of the founding principles of a democratic society."
Reuters said that should Buisson was found guilty of breach of privacy, he would stand to face jail time for up to a maximum of one year and would have to pay £45,000 in fines.
Majority of the recordings contain discussions about Sarkozy's electoral strategy at that time and Bruni's modelling career aspects should her husband fail to snatch the French presidency. The tapes' excerpts were published in satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine and right-wing news site Atlantico.fr this week.
Buisson's legal camp has claimed that the recordings were stolen from him and that they will file a subsequent complaint, Reuters said. Sarkozy's reputation to get damaged due to the audio recordings leak was magnified when leader Marine Le Pen of the anti-immigrant National Front (FN) dhared on Thursday that the Sarkozy aide had met with her father. It has been known that the conservative Sarkozy publicly denounced FN for its views.
