François-Marie Banier wants to “stick two lawsuits” to Netflix

The Bettencourt Affair: scandal among the richest woman in the world : the title of the Netflix documentary series, released at the end of 2023, made thousands – undoubtedly millions – of users want to take a look. And among them: François-Marie Banier. The photographer, sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros in 2016 for abuse of weakness – however avoiding the payment of 158 million in damages – confided on France Inter, Tuesday February 20, 2024 , at the microphone of Léa Salamé. “I saw it yes, and I’m very happy to have seen it. I’m going to sue them twice and also another one for counterfeiting”announced the one who was close to the billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, the former heiress and owner of the L’Oréal group who died in 2017.

Asked about certain passages from the series, and in particular one where Arielle Dombasle states that François-Marie Banier “is able to seduce whoever he wants with a devilish side“, the photographer immediately replies: “What’s very funny is that I haven’t seen Arielle Dombasle for forty years. It’s quite amusing. What she says is very nice but it’s totally false. Like the people who saw me with Madame Castaing (a rich decorator with whom he had a relationship, editor’s note) while Madame Castaing never received them. So the fact that I took advantage of Madame Castaing was judged by the courts to be false and that I wanted to be adopted as false too”he tackled.

Although friends for twenty years with the richest woman in France, he is required not to speak publicly about the Bettancourt affair. But François-Marie Bannier, now a novelist, nevertheless slipped that he n / A “surely not“derailed in the face of Liliane Bettencourt’s money. Just after having affirmed that”No“, he will not write a book on the case in which he was convicted, concluding: “People, who we take for idiots, have understood everything“.