Bernard Bajolet, former head of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), will be tried by the Bobigny criminal court for complicity in an extortion attempt against a businessman in 2016, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Tuesday, 29 October in Bobigny. prosecution. He will also appear for arbitrary attack on individual freedom by a person holding public authority.
Businessman Alain Duménil accuses the intelligence services of having used coercion to demand money from him in 2016. In March 2016, this Franco-Swiss involved in a multitude of litigation and commercial disputes prepares to board a flight to Geneva at the Paris-Charles airport. de Gaulle. . At the Air France counter, two border police officers check him and invite him to follow them to the police station.
In the room, he finds himself facing two plainclothes DGSE agents. Presenting himself as “the state”They explain that he must return 15 million euros to France. To support their request, they show him photographs of him and his family, taken in England and Switzerland. According to Alain Duménil, they were threatened. The businessman loses his temper and announces that he will file a complaint. The agents, whose names the DGSE has never revealed to the courts, disappear.
“Recourse to coercion”
In his order of October 23, of which AFP learned, the investigating judge followed the demands of the Bobigny prosecutor’s office by referring Bernard Bajolet to the Seine-Saint-Denis criminal court, competent at Roissy airport.
The investigating magistrate considers that there are “enough charges” against him for complicity in attempted extortion “due to instructions given to conduct an interview of which he knew the location and conditions of conduct (…)“These conditions induce the use of coercion and make the use of pressure more than likely during this interview.”.
Bernard Bajolet, head of French foreign intelligence services from April 2013 to May 2017, before retiring, was charged in October 2022.
