Jim P. is a particularly talkative person. But his trial, held on Friday February 21st in Nice in the south of France under a plea bargain procedure, failed to answer the many questions local detectives have been asking.
Mediapart has gained access to the investigation conducted by the Service Interdepartemental de la Police Judiciaire (SIPJ) crime unit in Nice and has sought to clarify the role he may have played. During the probe, Jim P. readily admitted to having worked for Diligence, a London-based intelligence firm already flagged for its supposedly dubious methods in the high-profile legal battles taking place in what has been dubbed 'Londongrad’; the UK capital has become a key arena for courtroom clashes between the Kremlin and its outcasts. “Diligence employed me, but the orders came from the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency,” Jim P. made clear, referring to the Russian state debt-collecting organisation.
This is the first time such a direct link has been established between a French citizen, a London-based agency and a Russian client. Contacted by Mediapart, Jim P. declined to respond to our questions.
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Jim P.’s curious path appears to have begun in 2013 on Avenue Pierre-Ier-de-Serbie, in one of Paris’s upmarket districts. At the time, he was working as a chauffeur for AAA, a luxury car rental company. That is where he met the man in charge, Alexander Pugachev, the second son of Sergei Pugachev.
The older Pugachev, an industrialist who made his fortune under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin before falling from grace, had not set foot in Russia since 2010. He tore up his passport and obtained French nationality in December 2009, along with a new identity: Serge Pougatchoff. His son Alexander, not yet 30, was struggling at the time to get back on his feet following his disastrous takeover of the newspaper France-Soir.
Fluent in Russian, Jim P. quickly piqued the younger Pugachev’s curiosity. “He’s a highly cultured man, an excellent pianist and a formidable chess player - much better than me!” recalled Alexander Pugachev. Before long, the two men were discussing a move to the Côte d’Azur, the Pugachev family’s French stronghold. Since the late 1990s, the father had acquired several villas in the southern region, managed through a half-dozen property holding companies. “Jim first worked as my chauffeur in the south and then, knowing my father needed someone to take over the management of his villas, I passed on Jim’s CV,” said Alexander Pugachev.
“It was a normal hiring, not undercover,” Jim P. was careful to make clear to detectives. As a butler, he was paid “2,500 euros in salary, with an additional 500 euros in cash from Alexander Pugachev”. He was also provided with service accommodation in an outbuilding of the Château de Gairaut, the older Pugachev’s residence.
Shopping spree
At the time Jim P. was hired, the former oligarch was rarely in Nice, being preoccupied with a high-stakes trial before the High Court in London. There, he was battling the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency - the administrative authority responsible for recovering debt holdings - which was demanding 2 billion dollars from him in connection with the fraudulent collapse of his former bank, the International Industrial Bank or Mezhprombank.
Sergei Pugachev has always maintained his innocence in the Mezhprombank case, which is still the object of proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands. Nevertheless, on July 11th 2014, the English courts granted Russia’s request to freeze his assets worldwide, leaving his household affairs in Nice struggling. “I was managing Serge Pougatchoff’s many unpaid debts at the expense of small and medium-sized French businesses,” said Jim P.
It was in April 2015 that he witnessed an event which, according to him, triggered his decision to side with the Russian authorities. While holidaying in Nice, Alexandra Tolstoy - the British former partner of Sergei Pugachev and mother of three of his children - returned from a shopping spree with her car boot stuffed full of luxury goods. “She started ostentatiously pulling the bags out of the boot in front of the security guard, who had not been paid his wages for months. That incident made me absolutely furious. I told myself the Russian newspapers had been right all along - that Pugachev was no innocent victim, but was instead an appalling man.”
Without hesitation, Jim P. got on the phone to Moscow. “I personally called the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency switchboard,” he told detectives. And just a week after that call, Jim P. found himself meeting Trefor Williams, reportedly a former member of the Special Boat Service (SBS) - in other words British special forces - who headed the private intelligence firm Diligence.
Jim P. now became the eyes and ears of both Diligence and the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency within the Château de Gairaut, even though Pugachev still believed he had a safe haven in Nice. By late June 2015, however, the embattled ex-oligarch suddenly fled London for France, abandoning the English legal proceedings. “The judge wanted to ban me from leaving the United Kingdom. Then I discovered devices under my cars - including the one that took my children to school. I returned to France to save my skin,” he explained.
The English judge did not take kindly to his departure, sentencing him to two years in prison for contempt of court, while at the same time acknowledging the seriousness of the threats against his personal safety.
Thousands of stolen documents
Meanwhile, for 2,000 and later 4,000 euros per month in cash, Jim P. made one discovery after another, immediately passing them on via secure email to a Russian contact. A search subsequently carried out by the Nice SIPJ at his home confirmed the “monumental scale of his activities”, which investigators estimated at “several dozen gigabytes of data”, including “thousands of stolen photos, bank documents, financial records, valuable items…” as well as “videos, clandestine audio recordings, screenshots of conversations, and text documents written by Jim P”.
In the autumn of 2015, however, Jim P. was dismissed following a bizarre incident. “He borrowed a security guard's car and disappeared for more than 48 hours without a word,” recalled Sergei Pugachev. “I asked for the theft to be reported to the police. As soon as the complaint was filed, he returned the keys by throwing them through the gates.”
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Jim P. quickly sought to get his old job back. On November 18th 2015, he wrote to Alexander, asking him to intervene on his behalf. “I’m still willing to work for your father, to whom I was unfortunately unable to apologise in person,” said the former butler. His plea failed. Jim P. was forced to conduct his activities from outside the Château de Gairaut.
The New Year in 2017 provided him with an opportunity to get back in the espionnage game. Natalia Dozortseva, a trusted legal adviser to Sergei Pugachev, responded warmly to his New Year’s greetings. He then wrote to her on the Viber messaging app, saying he knew “people who wanted to meet her”.
“It was I who suggested to Jim that we meet in Milan,” recalled Dozortseva, who fled Russia for France in 2013. “I had planned for months to see Don Carlos at La Scala. I already had my ticket, but Jim, who is a great music lover, managed to find two box seats at the last minute.”
As the orchestra tuned up, the music-loving spy began to share confidences. He had no idea his guest was wearing a hidden microphone - bought by Pugachev, who was fully aware of the meeting. The recording, though distorted by the sounds of the orchestra, was nonetheless revealing. “When I started working for Sergei Viktorovich [editor’s note, Pugachev’s old family name], I was already an agent,” declared Jim P.
Natalia Dozortseva tried in vain to obtain the identity and motives of those orchestrating the operation. “I can’t answer that question. I’m just a soldier on the battlefield. I’m not a general,” he replied, before cryptically mentioning a “coordinator,” a “man who knows everything, everything, everything.” The conversation fell silent. Verdi took centre stage.
Once the curtain had, the two music lovers went to a bar. The sounds of Freddie Mercury replaced those of Verdi, and Jim P. became more talkative. He spoke of being recruited by the Russian services during the prestigious Tchaikovsky music competition and complained about his employers, who insisted on making him work as a chauffeur and butler when he was capable of much more. Natalia Dozortseva played along and agreed to meet the man who “knew everything”.
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The following month, as agreed, Jim P. arranged a meeting with Trefor Williams of Diligence, who was comfortably seated in the restaurant-bar of the Palais de la Méditerranée, overlooking the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. After the introductions, Jim P. made himself scarce, leaving Natalia Dozortseva alone with the Briton. “A pleasant, serious, professional man. Anything but a fool,” the lawyer recalled. According to the audio recording heard by Mediapart, Williams offered her three levels of cooperation: “bronze, silver or gold,” with the gold option including giving “testimony” against her boss.
“I always seek gold, but it’s very difficult to obtain. It requires a lot of courage,” Williams said in a soft voice. Throughout their exchange, Dozortseva went along with what the former military man was saying. “Tell me what you need. Don’t be shy, talk to me,” Williams urged her. No specific sum was mentioned, nor was the precise identity of the Russian clients.
False testimony
“I never saw him again,” Dozortseva stated. According to Mediapart’s sources, just hours after their meeting, Trefor Williams was intercepted at his hotel by the French authorities, who questioned him about his false passport and swiftly put an end to his taste for aperitifs in Nice.
After the failure to recruit Dozortseva, Jim P. saw the cash deliveries from Diligence dry up. “After that, I received almost nothing,” he told French detectives.
In 2018, he made another attempt with a new target: Alexandre V., Sergei Pugachev’s bodyguard, who was also accused of theft as part of the case. Jim P. negotiated a payment of 10,000 euros per month. But once again, the promised money failed to materialise, or at least, not enough of it. Just 5,000 euros were paid for six months’ worth of information provided by Alexandre V. about his employer’s movements.
According to Mediapart’s sources, in July 2019 Jim P. travelled to London to sort things out. Trefor Williams stalled, explaining that he had not been paid by the Russians for all “three phases” of work. However, a deal was reached for 36,000 euros, with the possibility of more - if Jim P. agreed to testify against Pugachev in the English legal proceedings. To the agent, this amounted to coercion to give false testimony. He refused to go that far. Instead, he turned to an entirely different authority: France’s financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet National Financier (PNF).
“I made contact with the PNF on my own initiative in August 2019,” Jim P. told detectives in Nice, who were surprised at how long he had waited to do this. Why had he not gone to the PNF back in 2015? His response was cryptic. “To put it briefly, Pugachev was manipulating French journalists, and I knew it would take a long time before the English judgment was recognised in France,” he said.
Alongside his dealings with the PNF, Jim P. set about settling old scores. On June 8th 2020, he wrote to Michaël Bendavid, one of Sergei Pugachev’s lawyers, sending him previous exchanges he had had with Diligence and the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency, proving his work for them.
What does it matter if my fragile vessel sinks, as long as the show is worth it!
In other words, Jim P. had handed ammunition to the very man he despised. “Why did I send copies of my correspondence with Diligence, which appear to play into the hands of a mafia banker whom I claim to hate?” he said. “Quite simply, because the most normal activity for sharks is to devour each other […]. And I am here, watching… What does it matter if my fragile vessel sinks, as long as the show is worth it!”
Pugachev has admitted he underestimated the damage caused by Jim P. Since March 2024, he has been under formal investigation and placed under judicial supervision by the PNF in France for aggravated tax fraud and laundering the proceeds of aggravated tax fraud.
“We did not expect, when filing a complaint for organised theft, forgery and use of forgeries, and breach of trust, that this man would be so talkative,” observed Adrien Verrier, Pugachev’s lawyer in Nice. “What concerns me is not so much the information or documents passed on to the French tax authorities. The biggest blow has been to the two cases that have been stifling us for years, in London and The Hague. This better explains the stalled or failed proceedings.”
The lawyer intends to argue that his client should receive damages from the case involving Jim P. Secluded in his château, Pugachev is refusing to admit defeat. “I’m not fighting for the money stolen by Putin. I know I’ll never see it again. It’s no longer even a question of honour or justice - it’s a matter of survival,” he said.
Throughout their investigation, detectives from Nice's Service Interdepartemental de la Police Judiciaire (SIPJ) crime unit were unable to determine whether Jim P. had recruited others or if he had ceased his espionage activities. When repeatedly pressed on this point during his questioning in police custody in 2024, he consistently replied: “I do not wish to answer.” Later, he added: “I cannot answer that question. Let’s just say I remain interested in this man.”
On February 21st, Jim P. and his accomplice Alexandre V. were both handed suspended prison sentences. Yet the trial had failed to answer all the questions surrounding Jim P.’s actions, leaving detectives and prosecutors in Nice somewhat baffled. “In his writings and conversations, Jim P. boasted of holding information on other oligarchs and very wealthy Russians,” they wrote. “But the investigation was not able establish how much was true and how much was fantasy with Jim P., a man fascinated by the world of ‘intelligence’, rebellious, and an undercover vigilante.”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter