Sarkozy exes bloomin' crazy
FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy and wife Carla Bruni have sparked outrage by spending £660-A-DAY of taxpayers' cash on fresh flowers.
The loaded couple also used public money to settle a £3,000 fine for late payment of electricity and gas bills.
But it is their £241,000 annual outlay on blooms for their Elysee Palace residence that triggered disbelief.
The staggering sum is even more than the £460-a-day Elton John famously spent at the florist.
First Lady Carla, 41 — an Italian heiress, ex supermodel and multi-millionaire in her own right — is regularly pictured arranging huge vases full of flowers inside the palace.
'Shock'
The £660-a-day figure emerged in presidential accounts for 2008 — Mr Sarkozy's first full year in office — during which time he made Carla his third wife.
National auditor Philippe Seguin revealed he had ordered the President, 54, to pay back £12,000 in personal bills which he had put through on public accounts.
Mr Sarkozy immediately asked for the receipts for the items to be returned in a bid to avoid a public outcry.
But the money spent on the flowers will not be paid back.
Mr Seguin admitted the latest review was a "culture shock" because heads of state had previously "hidden their accounts from any checks".
The figures were part of the first state scrutiny of a French leader's spending since the reign of Louis XVI.
His outrageous behaviour with Marie Antoinette was one of the direct causes of the 1789 French Revolution during which they were beheaded.
Mr Sarkozy's spending makes some recent British expense scandals — including BBC executives ordering flowers on the public purse — pale in comparison.
On becoming President in 2007, Mr Sarkozy awarded himself a pay rise of 140 per cent, taking his salary to around £160,000 a year.
An Elysee Palace spokesman said the floral bill was now being reduced, and that the 2008 figures were welcomed as a move towards "transparent government".
A High Court case in 2000 revealed that Sir Elton spent £293,000 on flowers between January 1996 and September 1997.
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