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Pictures of Hollande and actress prompt presidential palace job transfers

Five members of the presidential staff are being transferred after photos were published of French President François Hollande with actress Julie Gayet inside the Elysee Palace, officials said Friday.

French President François Hollande and actress Julie Gayet
French President François Hollande and actress Julie Gayet Reuters
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Hollande’s affair with the actress was revealed by paparazzi photos in January but snaps of the couple on a private terrace of the presidential palace published last week appear to have been taken from within the Elysee itself.

The celebrity magazine Voici said the pictures it published of Hollande and actress Gayet sitting together had been taken secretly in October. Voici described the photos as a “tender moment... behind the walls of the Elysee,” where Gayet spends “several nights a week”.

The culprit has not yet been identified but police are convinced the pictures were taken by a member of the president’s personal staff on a mobile phone from within his private apartments, according to the French newspaper Libération.

The daily also said that four of the five staff had been given their jobs in the palace by Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, adding to suspicions that a mole is the source of embarrassing leaks that could benefit the former president who has re-election ambition.

Hollande never recovered from the media firestorm that had been triggered in January by the photos of him wearing a scooter helmet to go visit the actress in a Paris apartment.

His partner at the time, journalist Valerie Trierweiler, published a bestselling memoir of their subsequent break-up, portraying the president as a contemptuous, cold-hearted and egoist man.

“Thank You For This Moment” has now been translated into 12 languages and is top of the French bestseller list.

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