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

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.
Mr Arnault, 75 – the world’s fifth-wealthiest individual with a fortune of $156 billion (£123 billion) according to Forbes – is not facing charges.
Nor is his huge conglomerate, whose other brands include Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co. LVMH paid €10 million in fines to avoid further legal proceedings in 2021.
The billionaire insisted he knew nothing of the entire affair when questioned as a witness in 2019, but his name looms large in the 237-page indictment.
Mr Squarcini is accused in 2013 of soliciting Christian Flaesch, the former head of France’s Scotland Yard, to send him documents related to a legal complaint by Hermès – at the time in the midst of a “handbag war” with LVMH.
Flaesch was fined and received a suspended sentence in February for handing over the documents.
Mr Squarcini denies any wrongdoing and told judges that protecting Mr Arnault was in itself a matter of national interest, given his fortune and international clout.
However, Judges Aude Buresi and Virginie Tilmont said protecting Mr Arnault’s “purely private interests” does not equate to “protecting (France’s) economic wealth”.
The DCRI, they said, “should not have intervened in this context”. Mr Squarcini’s actions had “harmed” the agency and “more broadly, the French state”, the judges added.
Benjamin Sarfati and Laure Heinich, the lawyers acting for Mr Ruffin, said: “This trial should enable us to understand how it is possible that in France today, a company like LVMH can afford to have a journalist spied on and a newspaper infiltrated, with the help of a former senior civil servant who was, after all, head of domestic intelligence.”
They argued that it was still unclear how the LVMH group “was able to benefit” from a judicial agreement that “allowed it to escape trial, leaving only Bernard Squarcini and the other people involved in this affair to appear”.
The trial continues.