This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

Nicolas Sarkozy is under pressure over yet another twist in the Bettencourt affair after Le Monde newspaper said it had proof that the French secret services had spied on one of its journalists to uncover his sources.

France's paper of record said an investigating judge had uncovered documents showing that state intelligence agencies had ordered the mobile phone operator Orange to hand over detailed phone records of its investigative reporter Gérard Davet. These included details of every call Davet had made and received and the geo-localisation of his movements.

Shortly after the secret services illegally requested the phone files on Davet in July 2010, Le Monde said state spies identified an adviser in the justice ministry as the supposed source for one of Davet's stories. The adviser, a magistrate, was swiftly demoted and posted to French Guyana.

The Bettencourt affair began as a family feud between the L'Oreal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, and her daughter. But in 2010 it exploded into a series of scandals that threatened the highest levels of the French state.

Investigations were opened into illegal party funding, suspected tax evasion and money-laundering while Bettencourt's links with Sarkozy and his government, in particular the minister of labour, Eric Woerth, came under the spotlight.

Davet was targeted after an article revealing Woerth's links to the case.

Le Monde began court action in September last year, suing for the violation of the French law that protects the anonymity of journalists' sources. The paper said the targeting of Davet and his personal phone information was illegal.

The alleged targeting of journalists in the Bettencourt affair, seen as an attempt by the state to intimidate sources into staying quiet, has become known as "the scandal within a scandal".

In a scathing front-page editorial Le Monde said the tracking of journalists had become "an affair of state" which lent credence to the suspicion that a cabinet noir, or office of shady operations, existed at the highest reaches of French power, namely the Elysée.