France: the founder of luxury conglomerate LVMH must be held responsible for spying on journalists
The trial of Bernard Squarcini, the former head of France’s domestic counterintelligence agency accused of leveraging his network to provide services to the multinational luxury group LVMH, started on 13 November. Victims of this surveillance affair include the founder and editorial staff of Fakir, a newspaper based in the city of Amiens, which was infiltrated and monitored between 2013 and 2016. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has testified in this case, and calls on the court to clearly establish the responsibility of Bernard Arnault — LVMH’s founder and CEO who will take the stand on 28 November — despite the judicial public interest agreement (CJIP), a text allowing journalists’ protections to be circumvented with impunity.
The facts are alarming: between 2013 and 2016, the LVMH group, headed by Bernard Arnault, called Bernard Squarcini, then leader of the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) — the Ministry of the Interior’s counter-intelligence agency that eventually became the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) — to spy on the newspaper Fakir via infiltration, stalking, photography and other means of illegal information gathering. LVMH sought to collect the personal data of Fakir’s employees, including its founder François Ruffin — who is now a deputy in the Somme department of France — and obtain a copy of his film, “Merci patron !”, which was in the process of being shot. On 13 November, the trial of Bernard Squarcini and nine other defendants began.
Yet the main perpetrator of this sophisticated infiltration operation is missing from the list of defendants, as LVMH signed a settlement agreement with the courts in 2021. Despite LVMH's clear involvement in the surveillance of Fakir, as evidenced by telephone exchanges published by the investigative outlet Mediapart in 2019, Bernard Arnault and LVMH’s other senior leaders are not implicated in the trial. The Paris public prosecutor considered "associated" with influence peddling and, as such, included them in a judicial public interest agreement (CJIP), which allows legal entities to secure the dismissal of criminal charges in exchange for paying a fine. In 2021, charges against LVMH were dropped after it paid a fine of ten million euros, without any admission of guilt and without prior consultation with Fakir's editorial team.
"We are disappointed to see that this captain of industry — who is especially industrious when it comes to spying on journalists — is not standing alongside his lieutenants. A cheque cannot erase crimes: justice is not an indulgence, and journalism must be defended. The despicable methods used to spy on Fakir’s editorial team are tactics our organisation has observed in southern and central Europe, and we must urgently prevent their spread in France. If the facts are not fully acknowledged, there is a serious risk that the same problems will produce the same results. We welcome the court’s decision to summon Bernard Arnault, who will be heard as a witness on 28 November and must face his responsibilities. RSF, which will be present at the hearing, firmly stands with Fakir and demands that the case does not set a precedent — either in practice or in law.
In effect, this legal situation provides impunity for crimes committed against journalists in France, as RSF highlighted during its testimony. In this case, it not only allows the main perpetrators behind the surveillance of Fakir to avoid accountability but also enables them to buy their innocence. RSF calls for an end to the misuse of the CJIP to circumvent protections for journalists, and the impunity surrounding offences committed against newsrooms and journalists in France.
LVMH's attitude toward journalists is well-known. These methods, which aim to stifle journalism, are part of a pattern of behaviour LVMH displays towards outlets investigating its practices. In 2014, while journalist Tristan Waleckx was investigating Bernard Arnault for the programme "Complément d’enquête" broadcast on the television channel France 2, the luxury group attempted to intimidate the programme’s editor and host, Benoît Duquesne.
During the hearing of RSF’s Director General Thibaut Bruttin on 20 November, one of the individuals employed by Bernard Squarcini to infiltrate Fakir, Albert Farhat, brandished his RSF membership card, highlighting his past work as a journalist in an attempt to request the organisation's protection. RSF reiterates that membership is not the same as support, and that being an investigative journalist should not be confused with involvement in private intelligence activities for a multinational corporation.
