A Paris court has found the former head of France's domestic security services, Bernard Squarcini, guilty of influence-peddling and using public resources to benefit LVMH. The trial shed light on efforts by LVMH – the world's biggest luxury group – to protect its reputation.
Squarcini, 69, headed France's domestic security services from 2008 to 2012 and was later hired by luxury giant LVMH as a security consultant.
The court on Friday handed him a four-year prison sentence, two of them suspended, on charges of using his security contacts for personal gain, including by obtaining confidential information for LVMH.
Squarcini, whose professional nickname was "le Squale" (the shark), can serve his sentence at home with an electronic bracelet. He was also fined €200,000 and given a ban on professional activities relating to intelligence or advisory services for five years.
His lawyers said he would appeal the verdict.
Links to Europe's richest man
Part of the verdict was related to the use of public funds to locate blackmailers targeting LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault in 2008, while Squarcini was still head of DCRI French security services (since renamed the DGSI).
That year, security agents staked out a cyber cafe in Aix-en-Provence to identify a suspect sending emails seeking to extort Arnault as part of a mission Squarcini defended as protecting French economic interests.
Arnault, Europe's richest man, testified during the trial in November as a witness but was never charged and denied all knowledge of a scheme to protect the luxury group.
French luxury mogul Arnault defiant at ex-spy chief trial
'A call to order'
Squarcini was also found to be complicit in spying on François Ruffin, a former journalist and founder of leftist magazine Fakir who is now a leading lawmaker with hard-left France Unbowed.
Ruffin filed a lawsuit in 2019 accusing LVMH of contracting Squarcini to spy on him for nearly three years while filming a satirical documentary "Merci Patron" (Thanks boss) for which the Fakir team planned to disrupt an LVMH shareholder meeting in 2013.
The film won a Cesar – France's equivalent of the Oscars – for best documentary in 2017.
Ruffin's lawyer, Benjamin Sarfati, welcomed Friday's verdict. "We are satisfied with this decision that serves as a call to order, though we regret the absence of Mr Bernard Arnault among the defendants," he said.
Proceedings against LVMH were dropped in 2021 after the company paid a €10 million settlement to close the criminal probe.
Squarcini, a close ally of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, was sacked as head of intelligence in 2012 after Sarkozy lost his re-election bid to François Hollande. Hollande, a Socialist, considered Squarcini was too close to the former right-wing president.
(with Reuters)
