A FRONT-PAGE photograph showing the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister of France, with her lover may cost the Editor of the magazine Paris Match his job.

Alain Genestar has been told to stop editing the successful weekly over the photograph of Cécilia Sarkozy and Richard Attias, a businessman with whom she had a relationship last year.

But M Genestar is refusing to leave, and he has been backed by staff who have voted in favour of the first strike in the magazine’s 57-year history.

Paris Match is owned by Hachette Filipacchi Medias (HFM), which is controlled by the French tycoon Arnaud Lagardère, a close friend of the powerful Interior Minister.

Although M Sarkozy had already admitted that his marriage was in difficulty, he was said to be furious when Paris Match published its exclusive photograph of his wife in August.

He complained to M Lagardère, who rounded on M Genestar for failing to tell him about the photograph in advance of its publication.

The relationship between the two men has been tense ever since, and in November M Lagardère said in answer to a question about Paris Match: “There are people you fire, absolutely. That’s life.”

On Thursday night, HFM said that it had asked M Genestar to become “director of publishing”, a post described in France as un placard (a cupboard).

The company said that it wanted to end M Genestar’s editorship because of his “ethical disagreement with the shareholder”. But in a statement the magazine’s 100 journalists denounced what they said was an attempt to “move him aside for political reasons”. It said: “The newsroom has been destabilised by nine months of rumours since the publication of the cover story on C écilia Sarkozy.”

M Genestar has halted a decline in circulation since becoming Editor in 1999 with a combination of hard-hitting journalism and stories about celebrities — or les people.

One of his biggest scoops was the revelation last year that Prince Albert of Monaco had had a child with an air hostess from Togo.

This week, Paris Match seemed to be trying to make amends with M Sarkozy, a leading contender for the presidency next year. It published photographs of him looking lovingly into the eyes of his wife during a weekend in London after their reconciliation.

The row over M Genestar comes as Paris Match is celebrating its history with a high-profile exhibition of the photographs that it has published of the world’s stars over five decades.

The exhibition, at the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris, is an illustration of the magazine’s role in France and beyond.

No other publication has had the same impact as a link between singers, actors, politicians and the French public.

Since its creation, Paris Match has published 39 cover photographs of Brigitte Bardot, 28 of Jacques Chirac and 25 of Jackie Kennedy. But the first was of Winston Churchill.

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