Two police reports, written in October and November 2020, reveal in great detail the private system of espionage set up by the former head of France's domestic intelligence agency, Bernard Squarcini, on behalf of the giant luxury goods firm LVMH, which is owned by billionaire Bernard Arnault. The documents describe full-scale surveillance, infiltration, the gathering of personal data, moles and the expenditure of lots of money.
The target of this extensive espionage system was an “agitator” journalist and future Member of Parliament, François Ruffin, his publication Fakir and a film called 'Merci Patron!' ('Thanks Boss!') about the use of outsourced foreign labour by French firms. Critical of LVMH and Bernard Arnault, this film was first screened in 2015 and was named best documentary at the César Awards in 2017.
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“It appears that the company LVMH, through Laurent Marcadier, the director in charge of protecting assets and personnel, paid a private company with the aim of obtaining intelligence on the community, political and private activities of members of the Fakir association and particularly of François Ruffin, as well as to illegally obtain a copy of the film 'Merci Patron!'”, concluded a report by the anti-corruption police unit OCLCIFF, which was dated November 27th 2020 and sent to the judge investigating the case, Aude Buresi.
Laurent Macadier, himself a former magistrate who had at one time worked as a legal advisor in the office of interior minister Claude Guéant when Nicolas Sarkozy was president, told Mediapart via his lawyer Antonin Lévy that he did not wish to comment.
The person at the centre of the surveillance system was Bernard Squarcini. Nicknamed 'La Squale' or 'The Shark', he was head of France's domestic intelligence agency – then the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur and now called the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure or DGSI - from 2008 to 2012 during the presidency of his close ally Nicolas Sarkozy. A subsequent move to the private sector was clearly lucrative for 'The Shark'; during the period investigated by the police, 2013 to 2016, his private intelligence company Kyrnos – the Ancient Greek name for Corsica – received 2.3 million euros from LVMH.
Yet this elaborate spying system and the payments seem completely disproportionate to the actual 'danger' posed by François Ruffin and his friends, who at the time were best-known for trying to disrupt LVMH's general assembly meetings dressed in T-shorts emblazoned with the message 'I Love Bernard'.
Another report, this one written by the police watchdog body the Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale (IGPN), which was jointly involved in the investigation, also indicates the scale of the espionage system that was deployed. Their report, dated October 15th 2020 and which was revealed by the investigative publication Le Canard Enchaîné, stated that “the investigations … were able to confirm that the Fakir movement was put under surveillance and infiltrated … for the benefit of the LVMH group, in a system of sub-subcontracting put in place by the company run by Bernard Squarcini”.
These two police reports were produced 18 months after Mediapart's first revelations in May 2019 about the surveillance of François Ruffin and the infiltration and surveillance of Fakir for LVMH's benefit. That led to Ruffin, who in 2017 became an MP for the radical-left La France Insoumise party, and the publication, based at Amiens in northern France, to make a formal legal complaint.
In July 2020 Mediapart also devoted an article to the spying on Ruffin and Fakir in a wider series on the 'The Shark's' secret operations, based on judge-approved phone taps of Bernard Squarcini.
Having been recruited by LVMH soon after he left public service, Bernard Squarcini used an extensive network of subcontractors and private intelligence firms which managed to recruit two 'moles' to infiltrate and watch over the activities of François Ruffin and his group.
When approached by Mediapart neither Bernard Squarcini nor LVMH made any comment.
Among the subcontracted workers used by 'The Shark' were former antiterrorist and ex-fraud squad police officer Hervé Séveno and Jean-Charles Brisard, a specialist in private intelligence and also an unpaid special advisor to the right-wing mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, on radicalisation issues.
Jean-Charles Brisard declined to comment when approached by Mediapart. Hervé Séveno told Mediapart he had “always accepted responsibility” for his actions. In relation to the case itself, he referred Mediapart to what he had said in May 2019 when he stated that he had not used “any illegal methods”.
In their summary report, however, the detectives set out all the potentially illegal services supplied by Squarcini's subcontractors on behalf of LVMH. These included infiltration by a person inside the ideological movement, the gathering and transmission of information, photos and emails, physical surveillance operations on the public highway and using video surveillance.
All this “clearly comes under the heading of actions by private research and human surveillance agencies … of a potentially criminal nature”, write the detectives. They portray 'The Shark' as the person who “gave the orders” for the whole operation.
To achieve their aims Bernard Squarcini and his team got two people – they called them “undercover agents” - to infiltrate their target's group. One was a man, who today describes himself as an investigative journalist, an advisor to companies and a former member of France's overseas intelligence agency the DGSE. The other was a woman, a photographer by profession, who while claiming genuine sympathy for the members of Ruffin's group, took part in a private intelligence operation against what was she was told was a dangerous “revolutionary” movement.
The detectives say that, as part of the surveillance of Ruffin and his movement, profiles of the targeted individuals were drawn up using detailed files. These profiles included not just political leanings and political and trade union membership but also vehicle number plates, telephone numbers and the recording of home addresses.
But the surveillance did not stop there. According to the police reports the “intelligence gathering went as far as the appropriation of images inside a private group before any publication of the film [editor's note, 'Merci Patron!'] with no regard for the legal rules … and for the benefit of the legal entity LVMH”.
In fact, at least one of the 'moles' succeeded in discreetly filming the documentary 'Merci Patron!', which criticised certain employment practices of the LVMH group, on the occasion of a private screening well before its successful screen release.
A number of telephone taps also revealed that, in order to ensure his private intelligence work for LVMH (in relation both to Ruffin and other jobs) continued to function well, Bernard Squarcini maintained “close relations” with the police and especially the DCRI (now the DGSI) “where he has continued to solicit personnel”, the detectives say. They noted that this was for the main part “manifestly” done for his “own personal interests”.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter