The Paris prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation Wednesday into allegations that France’s intelligence agency monitored an aide to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012, reports FRANCE 24.
Allegations that the DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security) secretly monitored the communications of Thierry Solère, a conservative politician, back in 2012 emerged on Tuesday in an exclusive report in French daily Le Monde.
A day later, Paris prosecutor François Molins announced the launch of a preliminary investigation into the "fraudulent collection of personal data, invasion of privacy and concealment of a crime" in the Solère case.
The covert surveillance started in March 2012, according to Le Monde, when Solère – then a dissenting member of Sarkozy’s UMP party – was running for a local election against Claude Guéant, who was France’s interior minister from February 2011 to May 2012.
In the June 2012 local election, Solère beat Guéant by a narrow margin in the Hauts-de-Seine département (county).
A defeated Guèant then denounced the “lies” and “anti-republican procedures” employed by his political rival.
According to Le Monde, the top-secret surveillance of Solère’s communication was interrupted by a chance discovery by the DGSE technical department, which caused a rift in the upper echelons of the French intelligence agency.
Responding to Le Monde’s article on Tuesday, Guèant dismissed the report as “fantasy” and denied any role in Solère’s alleged surveillance.
Solère is currently in charge of the primary race to elect a Les Républicains presidential candidate for the 2017 race. The conservative UMP party was renamed Les Républicains in May 2015.