FRENCH police probing a party financing scandal linked to L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt have searched the headquarters of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s majority UMP, the party said yesterday.

THE financial adviser to the L’Oreal cosmetics heiress at the centre of a French government financial scandal was taken in for questioning by prosecutors yesterday.

POLICE yesterday probed allegations that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign received illegal donations from France’s richest woman throwing up the biggest crisis of his mandate.