Police probe French former interior minister over phone leak

French police questioned a senior adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Brice Hortefeux, on Friday after he called a suspect in a campaign financing scandal to warn him his wife was talking too much. "Brice Hortefeux was questioned this morning by judicial authorities, at his own request, as a witness," after the call to Thierry Gaubert was revealed, Hortefeux said in a statement, telling AFP later that he was "relieved".
Hortefeux, France's former interior minister and now Sarkozy's key political lieutenant, was questioned for three hours then released without charge. Gaubert, another close aide to Sarkozy during a period before he became president, is accused of going to Switzerland to pick up cases of cash to finance Edouard Balladur's unsuccessful 1995 presidential election campaign.