French president Hollande's tryst apartment 'linked to Corsican mafia'
President faces media today with rising jobless figures and fragile relationship with unions on the agenda - as well as claims of love tangle
The "Hollande affair" has taken an unexpectedly sinister turn with claims - and counter-claims - that the flat used for the president's alleged love tryst with an actress was linked to the Corsican mafia.
French media reported that the apartment where Francois Hollande met Julie Gayet was lent to her by a friend who was involved with two mobsters.
However, the friend, Emmanuelle Hauck, denied her ex-husband Michel Ferracci, who was given an 18-month suspended sentence in connection with money-laundering last November, had ever owned, rented or lived in the property and threatened to sue for defamation.
It was later revealed that after splitting from Ferracci, Hauck lived with Francois Masini, who was shot dead last May in an apparent gangland killing.
As the opposition lambasted Socialist Hollande for exposing the country to international ridicule, his official partner Valerie Trierweiler remained in hospital over what one official described as "a severe case of the blues".
Meanwhile, Hollande was preparing for a key press conference today in which he was expected to announce new goals and a timetable for reforms in front of 600 French and foreign journalists. Jean-Francois Cope, president of the Union for a Popular Movement party, described the scandal as "disastrous for the image of the presidential role" while declaring his commitment to France's privacy laws.