For a long time the doors remained firmly shut. From senior judicial figures to top police officers, everyone was afraid to talk about it. They had reason to be concerned; for it meant revealing that the hunt for a major figure in Corsican organised crime had led police officers to the doors of the Élysée itself.
It was back in early 2015 that a source initially told Mediapart about a colonel in the gendarmerie who had gone to work for the French presidency and who was expected to be sidelined because he had been too close to the Corsican criminal underworld. In 2018, the Benalla affair – involving Alexandre Benalla, a security aide to President Emmanuel Macron – focussed our attentions once more on the issue of security at the Élysée. But when we asked about the gendarme who was going to be marginalised that same source, who was close to events, told us: “But he was never sidelined! He's just been promoted to general. It's Lionel Lavergne.”
Lionel Laverge helped run the sixty or so police and gendarme officers in the presidential security detail the Groupe de Sécurité de la Présidence de la République (GSPR) from December 2014 to May 2019, first as deputy and then, from March 2017, as its head. In this post he was in charge of ensuring the protection of François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, the two most recent presidents. This was despite the fact that the existence of a connection between the senior gendarme and the Corsican criminal underworld was known. Mediapart has confirmed this through around ten separate but similar accounts from three police services, an intelligence service and several legal figures and senior civil servants.
When Mediapart contacted Lionel Lavergne on Monday November 9th he refused to respond to our questions or even acknowledge them. “What's the point in publishing this story now?” he asked, astonished. “I will not say anything, I have a duty of confidentiality.”
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Officially this story began on September 24th 2014, when detectives from the anti-Corsican organised crime unit the Brigade Nationale de Lutte contre la Criminalité Corse (BNLCOC) and the anti-gang unit of the national French police the Brigade de Recherches et d’Intervention (BRI) got a tip-off from an informant. This was that a man called Dominique Luciani was someone who might be – according to the informant – carrying out “contracts”, in other words murders, on behalf of the Corsican underworld. And that he was also a fixer in the Paris region for several crime organisations.
Luciani's name had not cropped up before. The 49-year-old, whose family is from Corsica but who was born on December 22nd 1964 at Nanterre west of Paris and who lived in the nearby town of Courbevoie, was, to use the old expression, “unknown to the police services or the gendarmerie”.
Armed with this tip-off, detectives immediately set up surveillance of Dominique 'Doumé' Luciani's home. At 1pm that same day they saw their target – described as “very large, with salt and pepper hair and beard” - on the balcony of his apartment.
At the time the detectives had no idea that inside his home the suspect had a Manurhin .357 Magnum revolver, a Glock 9mm pistol, a box of 50 .38 S&W Special rounds and a box of 39 9mm Luger Parabellum rounds. These were not stashed illegally however; Dominique Luciani was a member of the shooting club at Courbevoie and had declared both weapons.
The detectives were also unaware that this former nightclub waiter, who had officially had no paid employment for about 20 years (the fault of a depression that led to a disability pension), lacked neither income or resources. At his home he had three computers, two tablets, eleven makes of watch (Audemars Piguet, Breitling, Hublot) and eight mobile phones.
And when 'Doumé' was not in the Paris region he was luxuriating in holiday resorts such as Honfleur, Monaco, Noirmoutier and Saint-Tropez. But most of all he travelled to Corsica. In 2014 visited the Bastia area in the north of the Mediterranean island at least five times. A friend of his was a female employee of Air France at Bastia-Poretta airport, and detectives suspect that he flew to Corsica masking his real name by adding an extra 'c' to Luciani.
Back on the afternoon of September 24th 2014, detectives watched Luciani leave his home at the wheel of his white BMW series 1. He drove very warily, resorting to “sudden accelerations” which led the detectives to stop tailing him.
The following day, and based just on the intelligence they had received and Luciani's suspicious driving, a preliminary investigation was opened into alleged “criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing a crime (murder as part of an organised gang) and the failure to justify resources”. It was an investigation that would lead detectives to the gates of the Élysée.
For two months detectives followed Luciani to meetings at upmarket venues in Paris such as the Hôtel Bristol and the L’atelier de Joël Rebuchon restaurant. The people he met included Kamel Berkaoui, known as 'Virenque', who is a gangster from the Paris region who is “completely integrated in the underworld of Corsican organised crime”, according to a statement from police at Versailles who investigated his attempts to import cocaine with the involvement of two border police officers at Roissy airport near Paris. He subsequently received a 20-year jail sentence and fines totalling 3.8 million euros.
And when he was not meeting known crooks, Dominique Luciani was meeting representatives of the French state.
As he came out of a Parisian hotel one day he called someone he knew in Corsica who was linked to organised crime. In between chatting about two salacious matters, Luciani explained to his friend that he was was with “our gendarme friend”. “He's going to get a great job, it's going to be good for us,” said Luciani, having intimated to the person he was chatting to that he had a hold over the gendarme through something in his private life. The two Corsicans said they hoped this high-placed contact would help them, especially in establishing gambling clubs in the Paris region.
A few days later Doumé, whose phone was still being tapped by detectives, telephoned someone called “Lionel” to whom he recommended a hypnotist. The detectives contacted the telephone operator to find out who the Corsican had been calling. The phone company gave them an address in the Yvelines département or county west of Paris which corresponded to a Ministry of Defence site. Though the gendarmerie reports to the Ministry of the Interior it is a branch of the armed forces in France and its members are military personnel. The investigators were convinced they were on the tail of the “gendarme friend” the two Corsicans had spoken about.
On the tape the detectives thought they recognised the unknown user of the phone. They then played the tape – without saying what it was about – to a colleague who had met the person they suspected it might be. At the first hearing the colleague said: “It's Lionel Lavergne!”
A police tail that started at the Grand Orient de France lodge
Colonel Lavergne was seen as one of the most brilliant officers of his generation and was a graduate of the Saint Cyr military school in Brittany. He had been a member of the gendarmerie's elite tactical unit the Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) when it was commanded by Denis Favier. By this time, 2014, Favier was the all-powerful director of the gendarmerie itself and close to the prime minister of the day Manuel Valls.
Lionel Laverge was in charge of the gendarmerie for the Haute-Corse – the northernmost of the two départements which make up the island – from 2009 to 2012 at the height of the fratricidal war which broke out between surviving members of La Brise de Mer criminal gang from Bastia. Detectives believed that Doumé Luciani was one of the gang's contacts in the Paris region.
Yet on the say-so of President François Hollande, Lionel Lavergne was due to be moved to become deputy head of the GSPR at the Élysée on December 14th 2014. This was just a few weeks after the telephone taps in which Luciani announced that his “gendarme friend” was going to get a “great job”. And it was already expected that, as there was an unwritten rule that the GSPR leadership alternated between the police and the gendarmerie, Colonel Lavergne would take over the top post as head of the security and protection unit from early 2015.
But even as the astonished detectives discovered a connection between their suspect and state officials (Doumé Luciani also boasted in one call that he was the friend of someone who was a member of an important ministerial office, whom Mediapart has not been able to identify), they found that their main task, targeting organised crime, was quickly gathering pace.
From November 24th 2014 onwards the suspect met several times with François-Marie 'Fanfan' Giacobetti, a farmer from Aléria in east Corsica who had come to Paris. Giacobetti is principally known to police for having been convicted and sentenced in early 2013 for extortion in the case involving the 'Cercle de jeux Wagram' or Wagram gambling club in Paris. French detectives believe that he is the right-hand man of Jean-Luc Germani, the leading figure in Corsican gangs and, at the time, the most wanted fugitive in France.
In their reports the detectives noted that after Giacobetti's arrival in the Paris region Luciani's behaviour “changed radically”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
For example, November 26th 2014 was supposed to be a big day for Doumé Luciani. He was a Freemason and was due to be made a master mason on that day. He had invited many “brothers” to the ceremony which was due to take place at his Grand Orient de France lodge. According to the phone-taps, it was in this lodge that Luciani got to know his mysterious “friend” from a ministerial office. Initially Doumé had informed 'Fanfan' that he would be unavailable on November 26th because he had a prior commitment at the lodge, a phone-tap revealed. But he changed his plans and instead Luciani later told his brother masons that he was not going to be able stay at his own ceremony because he had an “important meeting” to attend.
On November 26th 2014 detectives from the BRI squad in Paris were deployed on Rue Cadet in Paris where the Grand Orient de France lodge has its headquarters. Just after lunch they saw Doumé Luciani leave the building with Fanfan Giacobetti. The two friends went their separate ways. Doumé then keep changing his speed and direction, clearly trying to lose anyone who might be tailing him, and after turning off his mobile phone he walked into the entrance of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette metro station in the capital's 9th arrondissement or district. Inside the train carriage the Corsican from the Paris region studied other passengers and kept looking behind him, clearly very wary.
Detectives from the BNLCOC who were in charge of the phone-tapping then alerted their colleagues on the ground from the BRI that at 4.05pm Luciani turned his phone back on. Their target was at the Sèvres-Babylone metro station, in the 6th arrondissement. At the entrance to the nearby Le Bon Marché department store Luciani again met Fanfan Giacobetti, who was accompanied by a man wearing a grey cap and large-framed glasses. After around ten minutes the unknown figure left Luciani and Giacobetti.
The detectives who had been on surveillance managed to get a photo of the man in the cap with a telescopic lens. When they got back to the station they were unsure as to the man's identity. The following morning one of them had the idea of getting out a copy of Jean-Luc Germani's police file which had a photo of him, to compare it with the image of the man in the grey cap. The officer drew in a beard on the police file photo. There was no more room for doubt.
“It's him! It's Germani!” they said.
Because they had discovered that Luciani apparently had connections with senior officials, the heads of the BNLCOC and BRI police units decided not to inform their superiors. They were afraid that leaks at the higher echelons of the state might alert the Corsican criminals. “We worked in secret because we were mistrustful,” said one detective, speaking on condition of anonymity, who still remembers how a senior officer in the national police was “furious for not having been told”. A second detective said: “Yes, we were afraid of leaks. We didn't speak about our case outside a very restricted circle. We were very cautious.”
The following day, November 27th 2014, Dominique Luciani and the man in the grey cap left the car park at l'Opéra district in central Paris in a BMW and headed for Puteaux in west Paris. Police officers, guns at the ready, intercepted the pair in the nearby La Défense business district. The detectives discovered that they had arrested Jean-Luc Germani and his driver.
Questioned at police headquarters at 36 quai des Orfèvres in central Paris, Dominique Luciani insisted – according to Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper – that he did not know who he had been driving. “I met him by chance for the first time the day before yesterday at Le Bon Marché,” he reportedly told detectives. “I was on the phone and I was speaking Corsican with someone Corsican whose identity I have forgotten. At the end of my call [the man] approached me and spoke to me in Corsican. He said hello to me and we talked about our region, because we are both from the eastern plains [editor's note, on Corsica]. He told me he didn't know the capital and asked if I could help him get around in Paris.”
Indeed, in his conversations with police Luiciani, a man with an extensive list of contacts, showed a decided lack of curiosity. Interviewed by detectives in another case, he said in relation to the criminal past of one of his acquaintances: “I'm not in the habit of asking people questions ...”
In the course of the following years the Corsican 'godfather' Jean-Luc Germani was given a six-year jail term for his part in the 'Cercle de jeux Wagram' gambling club case and another six years for criminal conspiracy for arranging the gangland murder of Jean-Claude Colonna. The latter was the cousin of the former Corsican godfather 'Jean-Jé' Colonna. Germani was also given a four-year term for having aimed a gunsight laser at a gendarme in Corsica and a further 18 months for organised fraud and money-laundering in the south of France.
In June 2020 the journalists Violette Lazard and Marion Galland brought out a book Vendetta (published by Plon) on the criminal underworlds on Corsica. In it Germani, who tried in vain to ban the chapter on him, is said to have talked about his acquaintances in the world of business and politics as he sat in his cell at Baumettes prison in Marseille.
In tape recordings from his cell the Corsican godfather can be heard boasting of having organised the cleaning up of his hideaway at Puteaux in west Paris after he was arrested. “Tell her to come and empty the apartment. Quick, quick, quick!” he had said at the time.
According to a prosecutor who wrote the final indictment on the Corsican's years on the run, this act prevented the police from “seizing some 'papers' and some 'money' and above all his phones” from the flat. The result was that a section of the powerful network that had enabled the fugitive to escape the police for many years remains unknown.
However, the investigation into Germani did reveal that France's most wanted fugitive had hidden with his entire family in luxury villas in Corsica and Sardinia during the summer, and had dined in the best restaurants in the 1st and 2nd arrondissements in Paris when he came to the capital in the autumn. During one phone-tapped conversation made while he was in prison, the Corsican godfather is heard advising someone that “to enjoy a good holiday” he should go to the Royal Monceau or the Hotel Costes - both 5-star hotels in Paris.
'I have philosophical friendships, that's not how things are going to happen!'
As for Dominique Luciani, he was later placed under formal investigation for “receiving stolen goods from criminals” along with several other people suspected of helping Germani while he was on the run. These people included Paul Canarelli, who used to host former president Nicolas Sarkozy at his Domaine de Murtoli estate on Corsica. Like Luciani, Canarelli is also said to have known senior officers in the forces of law and order (see Mediapart's investigations, in French, here and here).
Between June and October 2014 Jean-Luc Germani is said to have spent ten or so days in the rural but upmarket accommodation at the Murtoli estate, accommodation that is usually rented out at 16,700 euros a week but in which he stayed as a guest free of charge. Germani lived in one of them immediately after a stay by the former junior trade minister Frédéric Lefebvre.
In a final indictment dated June 17th 2020 prosecutors in Paris called for Paul Canarelli, Dominique Luciani and two accomplices – though not François-Marie Giacobetti who walked free from custody – plus Jean-Luc Germani to stand trial for having helped Germani while he was on the run.
While he waits for this potential trial, Dominique Luciani has found a job. He is “director of institutional relations” at a company working in artificial intelligence in the Paris region. According to Jean-Philippe Hubsch, the current grand master at the Grand Orient de France, Dominique Luciani resigned from the organisation in February 2015. Mediapart understands that Luciani has been seen going to the bar at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris, where he is as wary as ever about being followed.
There has never been any evidence to support the theory that Luciani was an underworld hit man.
Mediapart spoke on the phone to Luciani while he was in the middle of a meeting. He responded to questions about his relations with Lionel Lavergne by saying: “I don't know what you are talking about. I don't understand who you are talking about!” Asked about having been placed under investigation, Luciani said “that's all behind me” before refusing to answer any more questions and putting the phone down.
The fact that Colonel Lavergne's name had cropped up in an investigation into the Corsican criminal underworld was flagged in a report written by Éric Hermenier, who at the time was head of the BNLCOC. It was sent to his superiors at the national police force headquarters. When Mediapart approached him Éric Hermenier declined to comment.
Several sources said that Colonel Lavergne had got wind of the fact that a report had been written about him and took the matter up with Christophe Molmy, head of the BRI police unit, even though he had not written that report. The two senior officers are said to have had a heated discussion in Molmy's office. Christophe Molmy refused to comment to Mediapart. Mediapart has not been able to establish how the gendarme would have been aware, even in a limited way, about the contents of an internal police report about him.
It turns out that the gendarme colonel had gone to a lot of trouble for nothing. Mediapart understands that neither the national police nor the police in Paris, both made aware of Lavergne's links with the Corsican criminal underworld, went any further in their investigations. It was the same story with the gendarmerie. When Mediapart asked Denis Favier, the former director-general of the national gendarmerie, about the matter he said: “I heard talk of it after his appointment [editor's note, to the Élysée security unit] but I was not officially informed.” Moreover, added the former gendarme boss, “no one showed me anything convincing”.
Sylvie Odier, who was in charge of the organised crime section at the prosecution unit in Paris, was made aware of the situation, as a highly-placed legal source has confirmed to Mediapart. But she left soon afterwards to go a post in the south of France. In fact the existence of the BNLCOC police report did not lead to any further action at all. “Colonel Lavergne was never questioned. In our service we always thought that the affair was going to break in the media. Nothing. He was protected,” said one of the detectives on the ground previously quoted. Lionel Lavergne's name did not appear in the final indictment involving Dominique Luciani that was drawn up by prosecutors in Paris this summer.
There mere fact that there were acknowledged contacts between Lionel Lavergne and Dominique Luciani was not on its own enough to establish any criminal offence. To phone-tap criminals and hear them express happiness about the promotion of a gendarme, and for them to think that it would be good for their business, is not proof of that gendarme's corruption. On the other hand, the minor services that a person linked with Corsican organised crime performs for you in the context of your private life does represent a weakness when you are preparing to become the man in charge of ensuring the security of the president of the Republic.
Scarcely a year earlier, the Élysée had been rattled by revelations from Closer magazine about the relationship between President François Hollande and the actress Julie Gayet and the fact that the couple had met in a flat linked to Michel Ferracci. He is an actor seen in the TV series Mafiosa who for a long time worked as a director at the Cercle Wagram gambling club. Ferracci was given an 18-month suspended jail term for his role in the misappropriation of money from the gambling club by La Brise de Mere gang. Ferracci was also very close to Jean-Luc Germani's brother-in-law and was the person who was at the other end of the line discussing Lionel Lavergne's future promotion with Dominique Luciani.
In addition, a connection - albeit a remote one - between a person taking charge of security at the Élysée and the name of someone who features in the Gayet affair also raises some alarm bells.
In early 2015 Thierry Lataste, the head of President Hollande's office at the Élysée, called Colonel Lavergne into his office. Lataste explained to the gendarme that François Hollande did not want to change the security team and so the colonel could not take over as head of the GSPR as planned.
Mediapart understands that the colonel's connections with the Corsican underworld were not raised at that meeting, even though Thierry Lataste had been informed of the situation and even though it was one of the factors that was taken into account in the senior Élysée official's decision. Even so, Colonel Lavergne had other ideas. According to a version of events that Thierry Lataste later told to three separate sources, the colonel gave a warning to the senior presidential aide.
“You haven't understood who you are dealing with. I have philosophical friendships. You'll see, that's not how things are going to happen!” the colonel reportedly told Lataste.
According to several sources, including a gendarme who has served under him, Lionel Lavergne holds a senior position in the Grand Orient de France, in the same lodge as Doumé Luciani. The lodge's grand master Jean-Philippe Hubsch refused to confirm this. “I have no information on Mr Lavergne. I am not going to reveal the name of any possible member,” he told Mediapart.
In any case, Thierry Lataste was shocked enough by the encounter to tell several officials at the Élysée about it. Contacted by Mediapart, he did not want to comment.
In the months that followed that meeting in early 2015 there were several press articles which expressed surprise that Colonel Lavergne had not yet taken over as head of the GSPR protection unit and put the responsibility for this squarely on the incumbent Sophie Hatt. According to accounts on the Atlantico and Capital websites the police chief was reluctant to quit her position in the context of the ongoing rivalry between the police and gendarmes. An investigation in Le Monde, based on accounts from within the GSPR itself, meanwhile criticised “flaws” and “inconsistencies” in the protection measures surrounding the president. Once again the finger was pointing at the role of Sophie Hatt. There was never any mention of the role of the second in command who was supposed to replace her. Nor did the real reasons why the Élysée did not want to replace her with the colonel get a mention either.
Enlargement : Illustration 4
“That's not how things are going to happen!” Lionel Lavergne is said to have told President Hollande's senior aide. And indeed, time would prove him right. On March 5th 2017 the colonel finally got the position he wanted. A year earlier Thierry Lataste, the director of President Hollande's office at the Élysée, had been appointed France's high commissioner in New Caledonia. Meanwhile Sophie Hatt herself had taken over a post in charge of international cooperation at the Ministry of the Interior. As a result nothing stood in the way of Colonel Lavergne getting the position as boss of the GSPR, a post he would hold for the next two years.
The information about the colonel's difficulties back in 2014 seems to have gone away over time. François Hollande indicated to Mediapart that he was unaware of any link between Lionel Lavergne and the Corsican criminal underworld until Mediapart's message to him on the issue.
Colonel Lavergne remained in his post as head of the GSPR when President Hollande left office after the election of Emmanuel Macron in May 2017. On July 25th 2018 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. That was the same day that he was questioned by a committee of inquiry at the National Assembly over the Benalla affair. That involved President Macron's former security aide Alexandre Benalla who had been caught on video assaulting May Day protestors at Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris, as revealed by Le Monde.
The new brigadier-general – the grade came into effect six days later – was summoned by the commission of inquiry to explain his relations with the man, Benalla, who was rumoured to want to reform the president's security, with the GSPR having a diluted role inside a new structure. “It was a serious, unacceptable offence,” Lionel Lavergne said of the events at Place de la Contrescarpe. “Mr Benalla's behaviour was very clearly unconscionable.” During questioning at hearings in both the National Assembly and the Senate he repeatedly stated that Alexandre Benalla “had no protection function in relation to the president of the Republic”. These comments were later contradicted by Benalla's direct superior.
Lionel Lavergne was later criticised by the Senate report into the affair as one of three senior public servants who had “held back a significant part of the truth during their questioning by the committee”. And he was later questioned by detectives from the Brigade de Répression de la Délinquance contre la Personne (BRDP), though no proceedings were taken against him.
In May 2019 Lionel Lavergne left as head of the GSPR but this was in no way a punishment. He was instead appointed as deputy director of operations and employment at the gendarmerie, where he oversees 123,000 active and reservist gendarmes. The leading publication for gendarmes, L’Essor de la Gendarmerie, predicts that in this post Lionel Lavergne should get his third star and become a divisional general.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter