Paris: President Francois Hollande’s Paris love nest is registered to a convicted criminal with mafia links, the Daily Mail has reported.
Michel Ferracci was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence last year for his role in a group that laundered money from a Corsican crime gang through a Paris casino.
The revelation will prompt questions about how and why Hollande was able to use the £2.5 million (Dh15.09 million) apartment for his trysts with actress Julie Gayet. It is said to have been used in the past for “private business” by senior French officials including philandering ex-presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.
The building, a stone’s throw from the Elysee Palace, contains apartments owned by wealthy businessmen including multimillionaire fashion designer Pierre Cardin.
The intriguing background of the fourth-floor flat — on which Ferracci pays the local taxes, although it is not known who owns the property — is bound to have been checked out by the president’s security staff.
Hollande regularly used the apartment for his liaisons with Miss Gayet. Many in France are wondering how photographers were so easily able to picture him as he arrived and left on the back of a moped wearing a crash helmet. They have pointed to the way Hollande’s clandestine behaviour exposed him to terrorist attack, blackmail and other risks. One news website suggested he may have fallen into a trap.
Ferracci, once a close friend and business associate of assassinated Corsican mafia boss Richard Casanova, is a former lover of the French actress Emmanuelle Hauck, who now uses the flat with their children.
Hauck is, in turn, a friend of Gayet, and there is a suggestion that is how she came to use the flat to meet Hollande.
Gayet, a divorcee with two young children, has her own home about a mile away.
