PARIS: A Paris court on Friday sentenced the former head of France’s domestic intelligence agency to four years in prison, two of them suspended, on charges of using his security contacts for private gain including by obtaining confidential information for luxury giant LVMH.
Bernard Squarcini, 69, known as “le Squale” (the shark), will appeal the verdict, said Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard, one of his lawyers.
LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man, testified during the trial but was never charged and denied any knowledge of a scheme to protect the luxury group.
The former head of the DCRI security service (since renamed the DGSI) was also ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 euros and given a ban on professional activities relating to intelligence or advisory services for five years.
The sanctions handed out by the Paris criminal court were broadly in line with what prosecutors were demanding.
Squarcini is however expected to never set foot in prison with the two-year jail term set to be served with an electronic tag, as is often the case in France with short sentences.
The charges relate to the period when Squarcini headed the DCRI from 2008 to 2012 and to his subsequent return to the private sector, when he worked largely for LVMH as a consultant.
Investigators say that as early as 2008, DCRI officers were deployed to try to identify a blackmailer targeting Arnault.
Other allegations relate to spying on Francois Ruffin, a former journalist who is now a leading left-wing lawmaker — and, from 2013 to 2016, the leftist newspaper Fakir that Ruffin founded.
“I would like to point out that I am here as a witness, a simple witness, and that my indictment was never considered by the investigating magistrates,” Arnault told a hearing when he testified in November.
“I was completely unaware” of the alleged scheme, he added.