Friday, November 15, 2024

"France’s former intelligence chief accused of spying for Louis Vuitton billionaire"

We noticed he was taking delivery of truckloads of Ruinart. Your average spy has never heard of Ruinart and here he was quaffing it by the bucketload. Suspicious.

From The Telegraph, November 13:

Bernard ‘The Shark’ Squarcini denies charges including compromising national security and misuse of public funds

France’s former domestic intelligence chief has gone on trial for allegedly collecting classified information on behalf of the country’s richest man, Bernard Arnault.

Bernard Squarcini, 68, who worked as a consultant for Mr Arnault’s LVMH – the world’s largest luxury goods group with brands including Louis Vuitton and Moët et Chandon – is facing charges including compromising national security secrets, misuse of public funds, influence peddling and forgery.

He is accused of breaking the law in particular to spy on Francois Ruffin, an activist journalist who is now a Left-wing MP.

In 2016, Mr Ruffin produced a documentary film called Merci Patron! that put the spotlight on Mr Arnault. It followed a family who lost their jobs at a supplier to LVMH when its work was moved out of France.

Nicknamed “la squale” (the shark) for his ability to hunt unseen in murky waters, Mr Squarcini ran DCRI (now DGSI), the French equivalent of MI5, under Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency.

The charges relate to events both while he was spy chief between 2008 to 2012, and after he was fired by François Hollande, Mr Sarkozy’s socialist successor, and set up his own intelligence-gathering agency, Kyrnos Conseil.

The agency racked up contracts worth €2 million with LVMH.

The victims of his alleged crimes include the luxury handbag brand Hermès, a policeman and a Kazakh opposition politician, gives some idea of the ex-spy chief’s supposed range and suggests why the probe took 13 years to come to court.

The nine other defendants on trial alongside him include state prefect Pierre Lieutaud, at the time the number two at the National Centre for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, and Laurent Marcadier, a former judge at the Paris Court of Appeal...

....MUCH MORE

And the watches. A sleeve of Tag Heuers up one arm and Hublots down the other.