France’s former spy chief has been sentenced to a four years in prison, with two suspended, after being convicted on charges relating to influence peddling and espionage, including while working for luxury group LVMH.
Bernard Squarcini’s conviction came after a complex investigation that took more than a decade. It involved events that took place when he headed France’s intelligence service between 2008 and 2012, and when he worked as a private security contractor for LVMH, which is controlled by billionaire Bernard Arnault, between 2013 and 2016 .
Squarcini’s lawyers said they would appeal against the decision. LVMH, the world’s most valuable luxury group with a €349bn market capitalisation, paid €10mn in 2021 to settle the allegations it faced in the case, without any admission of wrongdoing.
However Arnault was called to appear as a witness in the trial in November
Squarcini — known as “le squale”, or the shark — was convicted on Friday of offences including influence peddling, concealment of violations of professional secrecy, appropriation of national defence secrets and forgery of public documents.
One part of the charges concerned an elaborate scheme to spy on journalist-turned-MP François Ruffin and his activist group Fakir, while Ruffin was making a documentary about LVMH and its boss.
In another, Squarcini allegedly sent intelligence agents to uncover a man who wanted to blackmail Arnault in 2008. Another section involved Squarcini using contacts in the justice system to access confidential information about an investigation into LVMH’s in 2010 for failing to properly to disclose its stakebuilding in rival Hermès.
Hermes ultimately fended off the attempted takeover, and LVMH was fined €8mn by financial prosecutors in 2013.
Squarcini, 69, was also fined €200,000 and banned from working in “intelligence, surveillance, advice and economic intelligence” for five years. He is not expected to spend time in jail and will serve the two year sentence under electronic surveillance at home.
Squarcini’s sentence largely reflected the penalty asked for by prosecutors at the start of the trial.
In nearly three hours of testimony during the weeks-long trial at the end of last year, Arnault said he had no knowledge of attempts by Squarcini and his collaborators to infiltrate and spy on Ruffin’s organisation, or to obtain other privileged information for LVMH.
Arnault also said he had delegated these matters to his second-in-command, Pierre Godé, who died in 2018.
“Godé had full responsibility equal to mine . . . It is not for me to judge what Mr Godé did or did not do as I was not aware,” he said. “I had a manager who was in charge of all that, and we shouldn’t need to do the work twice.”
The ex-spy boss was tried alongside nine other individuals, many of them also former police and intelligence officials.
Laurent Marcadier, LVMH’s former security chief and a former magistrate, was acquitted as was police prefect Pierre Lieutaud. Seven other defendants were sentenced to between six months and three years in prison, portions of which were suspended, in addition to fines.
