French President Nicolas Sarkozy attends a ceremony at the French 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment barracks in Montauban, southern France, on March 21, 2012, in homage to the three soldiers killed by a scooter-riding gunman last week. The gunman is also believed to be behind the murder of a teacher and three Jewish children in March 19 school attack in Toulouse. A suspected Islamist gunman wanted for seven murders has said he will surrender late today to police besieging him in Toulouse, a prosecutor said. AFP PHOTO POOL JACQUES BRINON

Judicial immunity has expired ... Nicolas Sarkozy's mansion was raided on Tuesday morning. Photo: AFP

PARIS: French police have raided the home and offices of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy as part of an investigation into illegal campaign financing and alleged cash payments from the L'Oreal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, France's wealthiest woman.

On Tuesday morning, police searched the mansion rented by Carla Bruni in a gated community in the west of Paris, where she and Mr Sarkozy live.

Officers also searched the office of the legal firm where Mr Sarkozy is a partner and the new office he moved into after losing the presidential election to Francois Hollande in May.

The Sarkozys were away, having left for a Quebec chalet holiday on Monday, Mr Sarkozy's lawyer said.

As president, Mr Sarkozy had judicial immunity that protected him from legal action, but this expired on June 16.

A judge in Bordeaux is investigating whether Mr Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party benefited from cash gifts from the mentally fragile Ms Bettencourt, 89, during Mr Sarkozy's successful 2007 election campaign. The investigating magistrate is trying to establish whether Mr Sarkozy's campaign might have received €800,000 in illegal funding.

In February, Eric Woerth, the former French budget minister and UMP treasurer, was placed under judicial investigation over cash he was alleged to have received from Ms Bettencourt to fund the 2007 campaign. He denies any wrongdoing.

The investigation is part of the wider Bettencourt saga, which has gripped France for years.

Mr Sarkozy's lawyer, Thierry Herzog, said the raids would show nothing and that he had already supplied information to investigators that debunked suspicions of secret meetings with Ms Bettencourt. ''These raids … will as expected prove futile,'' he said in a statement.

Mr Herzog said magistrates looking into whether Mr Sarkozy had received funds from Ms Bettencourt had been supplied with diary details of all his appointments in 2007. These, he said, ''prove that the purported 'secret meetings' with Mme Liliane Bettencourt were impossible''.

Mr Sarkozy could come under the spotlight in a range of legal cases now he is no longer a head of state. He could also become a focus of the separate investigation into whether there was a shady ''cabinet noir'' at the highest reaches of the French government which used the secret services to spy on journalists at Le Monde to uncover their sources for stories about the Bettencourt affair. Mr Sarkozy has denied any links to the case.

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