France\u2019s former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on Sunday threatened legal action \u201cto defend her honour\u201d after an online petition demanded she repay 410,000 euros from the presidential budget that were used to fund her personal website while her husband was head of state.<\/p>\n
Some 77,000 web users had signed the petition by noon on Monday.<\/p>\n
Paris-based website developer Nicolas Bousquet, who started the petition, said it was \u201cobscene\u201d that such an amount personally benefited Bruni-Sarkozy and that the site should have cost less than 10,000 euros to create and run.<\/p>\n
The appeal was created in the wake of a July report by the French Court of Auditors that stated that Bruni \u201cbenefited from a personal website\u201d dedicated to her position as First Lady.<\/p>\n
The site, her lawyers pointed out, is not the same as the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation site she maintains today. She denies any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarla Bruni-Sarkozy reserves the right to fight, through the courts, all claims that attack her personal honour, namely that the Foundation that bears her name benefited from financing that never existed,\u201d her lawyer Richard Malka said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Malka said that the website mentioned by the Court of Auditors \u201cceased to exist\u201d in May 2012 and that the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation had not received \u201ca single cent\u201d of public money.<\/p>\n
Following the lawyer\u2019s statement, petition creator Bousquet wrote: \u201cWe are delighted to learn that the Foundation did not receive any public funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it changes nothing \u2013 410,000 euros were spent to finance web pages that promoted the activities of former first lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe should still pay the money back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former model turned singer Bruni-Sarkozy is currently promoting her album \u201cLittle French Songs\u201d.<\/p>\n
france24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France\u2019s former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on Sunday threatened legal action \u201cto defend her honour\u201d after an online petition demanded she repay 410,000 euros from the presidential budget that were used to fund her personal website while her husband was head of state. Some 77,000 web users had signed the petition by noon on Monday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9422"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9422"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}