Paris - Ms Xaviere Tiberi, wife of the embattled Paris mayor, Mr Jean Tiberi, was placed in police custody yesterday in a corruption investigation involving alleged illicit payment for fictitious work. The arrest came on the day a newspaper published allegations that city hall had paid wages for fictitious work to hundreds of political cronies in the 1990s when President Jacques Chirac was mayor. Ms Tiberi has been dogged for months by charges that she received some 200,000 francs from the Essonne district council in the Paris region, for a report on the prospects of economic links between Essonne and French-speaking nations.