EVERY now and then, a politico-judicial tangle emerges in France that draws in politicians from across the party divide. Such seems to be the case with the unprecedented wiretapping affair concerning Nicolas Sarkozy, the former centre-right president. On March 7th Le Monde, a newspaper, revealed that investigating judges started to bug Mr Sarkozy’s telephone last year. Having denied any knowledge of this, the Socialist government of François Hollande, the current president, now admits that it was in fact recently informed.

This is the first time that a former president of the Fifth Republic has had his phone tapped in connection with a criminal case. Investigating judges, who enjoy sweeping powers under French law, began to bug Mr Sarkozy’s phone in September 2013. At first, this was part of an investigation into alleged illegal financing by the former Libyan regime of his election campaign in 2007. While listening in, according to Le Monde, they were alerted to a different matter: an alleged attempt to exchange inside information from a high-ranking prosecutor about ongoing judicial investigations in return for securing him a plum job in Monaco.

Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog, whose conversations with his client were recorded, has called the wiretapping “monstrous”, breaking attorney-client privilege. He denied any attempt to exchange favours for information, and called the allegations “absurd”. The whole case, he said, was clearly “political”. Mr Sarkozy’s immunity from prosecution expired upon leaving office in 2012, and since then he has been linked to a number of legal cases. In one, centred on alleged illegal party-financing by a billionaire heiress, he was detained for hours by investigating judges, who in the end dropped the case against him. This latest affair emerged shortly before elections to local councils this month and to the European Parliament in May—and just as Mr Sarkozy had begun a return to public life, with an eye to a possible comeback in the presidential election in 2017.

The wiretapping revelations came days after it emerged that one of Mr Sarkozy’s former presidential advisers, Patrick Buisson, had also been secretly taping hundreds of hours of conversations. A former editor of a far-right newspaper, Mr Buisson would hide a recording device in his pocket and used the tapes, his lawyer said, as an aide mémoire. So far, the published transcripts range from the banal to the politically crushing. In one, Mr Sarkozy jokes to his wife, Carla Bruni, that he “became rich by getting married”. In another, he calls the idea of appointing Jean-Louis Borloo, considered at the time a possible prime minister, “grotesque”. But further revelations could be more compromising. Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer is now seeking an injunction to secure the removal of transcripts published online.

The Buisson bugging affair, at least so far, is merely an embarrassment—although it does raise questions about Mr Sarkozy’s judgment in hiring the adviser. The fallout from the wiretapping case, however, could be wider. Not only is the judicial investigation likely to drag on for months, throwing uncertainty over Mr Sarkozy’s comeback, it also harms the government. At first, ministers denied all knowledge of the wiretap. Christiane Taubira, the justice minister, claimed that she had not been informed. The interior minister insisted that he learned about it in the press.

On March 11th, however, shortly before Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical newspaper, published allegations that the government did in fact know, Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, conceded that the government was told about the wiretapping of Mr Sarkozy’s phone on February 26th, but not about the content. The next day, the Paris public prosecutor said that on that date he had indeed passed details of the case to the justice ministry, which has ultimate authority over public prosecutors.

The upshot is that the government now looks incompetent at best, and at worst untruthful—to the delight of the political right. Jean-François Copé, head of the UMP party, accused Ms Taubira of having “lied”(which she denies) and called for her resignation. His friends have denounced a conspiracy against Mr Sarkozy. In the meantime, one politician is keeping relatively quiet: Marine Le Pen. As claims and counter-claims fly, the most likely electoral beneficiary of all this is her party, the populist National Front.