If your motor scooter is stolen in France, there is little chance that you will see it again. But if your name is Sarkozy, it seems, the odds increase in your favour.

As Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and chief law enforcer, was meeting Tony Blair in London yesterday, France was regaled with how a crack team of sleuths solved the case of his son’s 50cc Piaggio.

Jean Sarkozy, 19, lost his scooter on January 7 after he left it unlocked outside his mother’s home in a wealthy Parisian suburb.

Days later, police in the northeastern suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis — scene of the 2005 riots that were inflamed by Mr Sarkozy’s harsh approach — were alerted to the rare sight of a scooter with the “92” plate of the prosperous western Hauts-de-Seine. When it was identified as the Sarkozy machine, Paris sent in the crime squad.

They took fingerprints and DNA samples from a crash helmet. These were traced to a pair of 17-year-olds, who had had earlier dealings with the law. They and another teen-ager confessed, police said.

The operation, thought to have cost thousands of euros, drew mockery from the Federation of Angry Motorcyclists. “This is quite funny, but it has nothing to do with the ordinary motorcyclist,” said Frédéric Brodziak, the chief motard en colãre (angry motorcyclist). “When we go to the police, they always tell us that we have not the slightest chance of finding our two-wheeler. Sometimes we know the thief, but the police say it is impossible to go into estates like that to retrieve our property.”

According to the association, small scooters account for three quarters of the 85,000 motorcycles stolen annually in France. Only 8 per cent of the thefts are solved.

A police union last night called on President Chirac to order a parliamentary inquiry. The Action-Police Union, which represents right-wing officers, complained that the force had been used for Mr Sarkozy’s private purposes. “This kind of theft is completely banal and is never the subject of such an investigation,” it said.

A spokesman for prosecutors at Bobigny told The Times that “all scientific and technical methods that the police routinely use were applied in this investigation . . . There has been no trace of any personal intervention by Nicolas Sarkozy.”

David Skuli, chief of police for the Seine-Saint-Denis département, said that the investigation, including the DNA search and door-to-door questioning, was no different from any other inquiry into stolen vehicles.

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