Echoes of Bettencourt saga? 'Love cruise' boss says divorce case wife is being manipulated

Most popular Seine boat firm at centre of criminal complaint of 'fraudulent abuse of weakness'

Bateaux-Mouches riverboats are a popular way to tour (AFP/Getty)

The Bateaux-Mouches claim to be the ultimate love boats. “Offer her your love; we take care of the rest.” Or so says the English-language website for the glass-encased launches which ply the river Seine.

“For more than 60 years, the Compagnie des Bateaux-Mouches has told a love story to generations of passengers, those who are curious, poets, those who are romantic or in love,” it warbles. A story of love gone sour now threatens to torpedo the company, which operates the biggest and most popular river boats in Paris.

Last year Charlotte Bruel, a painter and heiress to the Bateaux-Mouches fortune, started divorce proceedings against the man who used to be both her husband and the manager of the company. Now French media report that Radé Matovic has made a criminal complaint of “fraudulent abuse of weakness”, alleging that his wife is being manipulated by four people.

Mr Matovic’s claim has been compared to the Bettencourt saga, which came to trial in February. The octogenarian L’Oréal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, was allegedly fleeced of hundreds of millions of euros by friends and advisers. A judgment is expected next month.

Mr Matovic claims that Ms Bruel, 49, has suffered from “serious problems of anxiety” for three years.

The Paris state prosecutor’s office has reportedly agreed to investigate the complaint. Mr Matovic, who is seven years younger than his wife, was the manager of Bateaux-Mouches for 11 years before he was sacked by his wife last summer. “Certain people have taken advantage of her vulnerability to persuade her to take decisions which run contrary to the interests of the company,” he alleges.

Ms Bruel, only daughter of the founder of Bateaux-Mouches, and owner of 99.77 per cent of the company, has refused to comment publicly. And yesterday, her lawyers were unavailable for comment. But according to Paris Match, at the company’s annual general meeting last September she accused her husband of mounting a “coup” plot to take sole control of the business, saying that he had placed her “in the ludicrous position of being stripped of all authority, placing the company in peril”.

Mr Matovic, born in Montenegro, was once the right-hand man of Charlotte’s father, Jean Bruel, who founded Bateaux-Mouches in 1949. Mr Bruel had the idea of using search-lights left behind by the German army in 1944 to equip tourist launches to illuminate the great Paris monuments at night. Mr Bruel died in 2003.

To this day, the 15 Bateaux-Mouches, which resemble floating green-houses, have powerful beams to light up the quays of the Seine after nightfall. They also offer romantic dinners, served by waiters in traditional long white aprons.

With 2,500,000 passengers a year, the Bateaux-Mouches claim to be the fourth most popular tourist attraction in Paris, after the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame cathedral. The name – literally “fly boats” – comes from an ancient French phrase for light river craft.

“Jean Bruel taught me this business,” Mr Matovic told the newspaper Le Parisien. “After he died, I reorganised the company and invested millions. In 2003, our turnover was €10m. Now it is €24m [£18m].”

He claims that four people have exploited his wife to boost their earnings “in a completely unjustified manner”. He also, it is reported, alleges that they then began to interfere in the management of the company to push him overboard, “because I was the only person to stand up to their destructive decisions.”

As the French saying goes: “La vie n’est pas une longue fleuve tranquille.” Life is not a long, peaceful river.