Investigation Launched in Sarkozy's Infidelity Rumors

Paris, April 6, 2010— -- A preliminary investigation is underway in France to find the origin of Internet rumors that claimed President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy were having affairs.

So far two reporters have lost their jobs. Both worked for a subsidiary of the Internet edition of France's Sunday newspaper "Journal du Dimanche," which repeated the rumors in a blog and started the media frenzy.

The probe was launched after the publisher of the "Journal du Dimanche," Hachette Filipacchi, lodged a formal complaint last week alleging someone fraudulently planted the story on one of its blogs. Hachette Filipacchi is controlled by one of President Sarkozy's close friends, Arnaud Lagardère

The investigation will look at "whether those creating rumors for these blogs did it for themselves or whether they were manipulated (by those) who might want to destabilize the life of the Sarkozy couple," Thierry Herzog, Sarkozy's lawyer, told RTL radio Tuesday.

Herzog added that the reports of "liaisons" by the French first couple were "totally unfounded." Herzog suggested that the rumors might have been started in an attempt to destabilize Sarkozy's position at a time when he is seeking to regulate global capitalism and France is preparing to assume the G20 presidency in 2011.

"We want to get to the bottom of this so that it doesn't happen again," Sarkozy's communications adviser Pierre Charon said last week, talking to the website of the newsweekly magazine "Le Nouvel Observateur."

Early last month, rumors that both Sarkozy and Bruni were having extramarital affairs were started by a single tweet suggesting the former-supermodel-turned-singer was cheating with an award-winning French singer six years her junior. Sarkozy, meanwhile, was said to have found comfort in the arms of his ecology minister Chantal Jouanno, 40, who is married and a karate champion.