The ex-director general of external security (DGSE) Bernard Bajolet was indicted in October for complicity in attempted extortionntowards a businessman, who accuses the information service of having used coercion to demand money from him in 2016, AFP learned on Wednesday from a source familiar with the matter.
Bernard Bajolet, at the head of the DGSE from April 2013 to May 2017 before retiring, was also indicted for arbitrary interference with individual freedom by a person holding public authority, added this source, confirming information from the newspaper The world.
In March 2016, Alain Duménil, a 73-year-old Franco-Swiss businessman who appears in a plethora of legal cases and commercial disputes relating to the management of his businesses in France and Switzerland, is preparing to embark on a flight leaving for Geneva at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, according to the account of the source close to the file.
The summary of the case
At the Air France counter, it is checked by two officials from the PAF (border police). After asking him for his passport, they claim a more thorough check and invite him to follow them to the police station located in terminal 2F. He is then brought to a room in the police station. Two of the 7,000 agents of the DGSE, in civilian clothes, enter the room, according to the same source.
Presenting themselves as “the State”, they tell him that he must reimburse 15 million euros to France. To do this, he must tell his counsel to get in touch with a lawyer to set the terms that will allow him to pay off his debt. To support their request, they show him photos of him and his family, taken in England and Switzerland. According to the account given by Alain Duménil, they would have made threats. The interview lasts a few minutes, the businessman loses his temper and announces that he is filing a complaint. Agents disappear.
The “practices” of the DGSE
In October 2022, Bernard Bajolet was heard and indicted. He explains to the investigating judges that he validated the principle of an interview at the airport but did not go into the details of its implementation. The names of the services and people in charge of this file, as well as those of the agents who conducted the interview will never be disclosed, protected by defense secrecy.
For Bernard Bajolet, the objective was a short and unconstrained contact with a man considered by the institution to be elusive and with whom many previous contact attempts have failed. “This is a long-awaited step forward, which is not yet a final outcome, but which very clearly calls into question the practices of the DGSE in the context of the handling of this case”, declared to the AFP Me Nicolas Huc-Morel and William Bourdon, lawyers for Alain Dumenil.