By Juliette Jabkhiro and Mimosa Spencer
PARIS (Reuters) – A Paris court found the former head of France’s domestic security services, Bernard Squarcini, guilty on Friday of using public resources to benefit LVMH, in a trial that shed light on efforts by the world’s biggest luxury group to protect its reputation.
Squarcini, 69, who headed France’s domestic security services from 2008 to 2012, was later hired by LVMH as a security consultant.
The court gave him a two-year prison sentence that he can serve at home with an electronic bracelet and an additional two years suspended, and fined 200,000 euros ($217,300). His lawyers said he would appeal against the verdict.
Part of Friday’s verdict was related to the use of public resources to locate blackmailers targeting LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault in 2008, while Squarcini was still head of the country’s security services.
That year, security agents staked out a cyber cafe in Aix-en-Provence to identify a suspect sending emails seeking to extort Arnault, as part of a mission Squarcini defended as protecting French economic interests.
Squarcini was also found to be complicit in the illegal surveillance of Francois Ruffin, a French lawmaker who at the time was an activist, along with members of his left-wing publication Fakir. Ruffin and the members of Fakir were planning to disrupt an LVMH shareholder meeting in 2013 and preparing a satirical documentary film “Merci Patron”.
The film, which won the French Cesar award for best documentary in 2017, follows family members who lost their jobs at a supplier to LVMH.
LVMH boss Bernard Arnault told judges in November that he did not know about the illegal surveillance he said was ordered nearly 10 years prior by a close associate who died in 2018.
Ruffin’s lawyer, Benjamin Sarfati, welcomed Friday’s verdict.
“We are satisfied with this decision that serves as a call to order, though we regret the absence of Mr Bernard Arnault among defendants,” he said.
LVMH, which reached an agreement in 2021 to pay a 10 million euro settlement to close a criminal probe into its role in the spying case with no admission of guilt, declined to comment.
($1 = 0.9204 euros)
(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro and Florence Loeve, writing by Mimosa Spencer; editing by Dominique Patton, Aidan Lewis and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
