FCNC in leptonic and semileptonic decays of D mesons in a general two-Higgs doublet model

Large long-distance standard model effects in FCNC semileptonic D decays can make observable these processes in future measurements. Eventual disagreements in this sector and/or the observation of lepton family violating (LFV) D decays would require an explanatio beyond the SM framework. In this paper we confront present experimental data on leptonic and semileptonic FCNC and LFV D meson decays with a version of the two-Higgs doublet model that allows these effects to occur at tree- level. The stringent bounds on the parameters of the model are obtained from D^0 --> l^+l'^- and D --> pi l^+l'^- decays. The consistency of the model requires that the branching fractions of D --> V l^+l'^- decays should be below the 10^{-9} level.