‘I’m not answering these stupid questions!’

On the morning of Thursday, November 28, in front of a packed courtroom in Paris, a leading figure took the stand. The head of the LVMH luxury goods group, Bernard Arnault, appeared with the rosette on a gold braid of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor pinned to his suit lapel. He was summoned to appear as a witness in the trial of former intelligence boss Bernard Squarcini and nine others. The 10 defendants are on trial for charges ranging from “unlawful employment as a private research agent” to “passive influence peddling,” mainly in connection with assignments given to Squarcini by LVMH.

Among them, the surveillance and infiltration operation carried out between 2013 and 2016 on the newspaper Fakir and its co-founder, left-wing politician François Ruffin, while he was preparing his documentary Thanks Boss! about employees made redundant by a subcontractor of the luxury group. It was this journalist, who has since become an MP, who had him summoned, forcing him to attend the hearing, “in a case where LVMH is written on every page,” said one of his lawyers.

“Profession?” the presiding judge, Benjamin Blanchet, asked the witness per custom. “I usually say engineer,” replied Arnault. Accompanying him on the benches were his son Antoine, his lawyer Jacqueline Laffont and LVMH’s director of external relations, Jean-Charles Tréhan.

After pointing out that he is “here as a simple witness and [that] no indictment has ever been considered,” the businessman recalled the weight of his group in the global economy – more than “220,000 direct employees” present in “80 countries.” Then he took a more offensive stance, lamenting the “constant criticism” leveled at “successful French entrepreneurs” and the “untruths” according to which “[they are] champions of redundancies and relocations.” He accused Ruffin’s documentary of echoing these “untruths.”

‘Absolutely unaware’

Questioned by Blanchet, he gave the same answers as during his hearing by the National General Police Inspectorate (IGPN, which investigates cases concerning police officers) in 2019. He “was absolutely unaware” of the matters for which LVMH service providers and certain civil servants are being brought before the court. He was not aware of the request made to domestic intelligence to identify a blackmailer claiming to have photographs of Arnault in the company of his alleged mistress, nor of the spying on Fakirnor of the attempts to obtain information on a complaint lodged by Hermès against LVMH, nor of the assistance obtained by his group to obtain a visa for his mother-in-law’s nurse.

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