A courtroom drama in Paris has cast an unflattering light on France’s intelligence service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), which has been accused of misusing a secret emergency fund and engaging in criminal coercion to recover millions lost in failed investments. The case, which involves Bernard Bajolet, 76, the former head of the DGSE, has raised troubling questions about financial mismanagement and the culture within one of Europe’s most powerful espionage agencies.
As reported by The Times UK, Bajolet appeared before the Bobigny criminal court north of Paris this week, charged with aiding and abetting extortion in connection with a dispute between the DGSE and Alain Duménil, a flamboyant businessman and former owner of a luxury goods group. Duménil, who has prior convictions for tax fraud and insulting the police, stands accused by the DGSE of embezzling part of a highly secret fund once reserved for use in the event of a national crisis or foreign invasion. Duménil denies the allegation, claiming instead that he was the victim of threats and intimidation orchestrated by intelligence agents.
According to testimony presented in court, Duménil alleged that two DGSE operatives warned him he would “need a wheelchair” if he failed to repay €15 million they said he owed the agency. He also claimed that the agents showed him surveillance photographs taken in Geneva and London of him and his family, making clear that he was under watch. Prosecutors told the court that while the agents involved were never identified, they believe Bajolet played a role in organizing the intimidation.
Bajolet, who led the DGSE from 2013 to 2017, has vehemently denied the accusations. His lawyer, Mario-Pierre Stasi, told the court that his client “has done nothing wrong” and took “no action, no initiative, and no part in any form of criminal offense.”
The origins of the fund at the heart of the scandal stretch back more than a century. It was created after the First World War from a portion of German reparations and later reaffirmed following World War II, intended to ensure that France’s intelligence network could operate independently in the event of a Soviet invasion or a collapse of the state. Its size remains a classified secret, but documents presented to the court show that agents were tasked with making the money “fructify” — or generate profits.
Those investments, however, were not always sound. In the 1990s, the DGSE placed more than €20 million into a struggling luxury conglomerate known as EKF, which owned a string of brands, including Francesco Smalto, a designer once convicted of procuring sex workers for Gabon’s late ruler, Omar Bongo. In 2002, Duménil acquired the group through his company Alliance Designers, in which a DGSE-linked investment vehicle took a 14.86 percent stake worth €10.8 million.
By 2010, the venture had collapsed amid claims that Duménil’s company was little more than a shell. The DGSE’s lawyers accused him of siphoning off the funds, while Duménil insisted he had poured millions of his own money into saving the brand. François Barthes, EKF’s founder, later quipped to Le Monde that “the DGSE should have invested in bricks and mortar, not in knickers. Luxury is light years away from their culture.”
When negotiations between Duménil and the DGSE failed, tensions allegedly escalated. Duménil told the court that in May 2016, as he prepared to board a flight at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, police diverted him to a private room where two DGSE agents awaited. They reportedly warned him to repay €15 million or face crippling injuries — threats he ignored before filing a criminal complaint.
The scandal arrives at a time of mounting embarrassment for French intelligence. As Reuters noted, the DGSE has been under intense scrutiny following a series of strategic failures. President Emmanuel Macron dismissed its former chief, Bernard Émié, in December after the agency failed to anticipate major geopolitical events — from the secret signing of the AUKUS defense pact by the UK, the U.S., and Australia in 2021, which cost France a lucrative submarine deal, to its misjudgment of Russia’s intentions before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The agency also failed to foresee coups in Niger and Mali that derailed years of French military engagement in the Sahel.
The trial of Bernard Bajolet continues, threatening to further expose the internal workings — and financial follies — of a service long portrayed in fiction, as in the hit series The Bureau, as one of the world’s most capable and enigmatic spy organizations.
