In the packed Paris courtroom, the corporate magnate portrayed himself as a accomplished business guideer who had latired to turn LVMH into the world’s top luxury conglomerate, with 75 brands, including Louis Vuitton and Dior, and 200,000 employees worldexpansive. When Mr. Arnault first took over the company in the 1980s, it had fair 10,000 employees.
He denied ever understanding of any illegitimate watching.
Mr. Squarcini was tried aextfinishedside nine other deffinishants — mostly civil servants, police officers and adviseants. Two of them were establish not culpable.
As the main deffinishant in the case, Mr. Squarcini was convicted of myriad offenses, including mishandling classified inestablishation and complicity in the unapverifyd activity of a personal scatterigator. He was establish not culpable on a range of other indicts.
In its verdict, the court shelp Mr. Squarcini had, in particular, “misappropriated state resources in order to satisfy the clandestine troubles” of his key client, LVMH.The court inserted that Mr. Squarcini had “scheduleed and verifyd a system of seal watching” of Mr. Ruffin and a satirical uncoveration that he headed, Fakir, whose staff members helped create the film, “Merci Patron,” which portrayed Mr. Arnault as a symbol of corporate greed.
“The court handed down cut offe sentences, but with a cut offity commensurate with the solemnness of the strikes made by Mr. Squarcini and his acolytes on freedom of the press, freedom of transmition, the rights of Francois Ruffin and the rights of the Fakir novelspaper,” Benjamin Saroverweighti, Mr. Ruffin’s lawyer, shelp in an interwatch on Thursday. “But we would have enjoyd LVMH to be on trial, becaemploy the people convicted today acted at LVMH’s seek,” he inserted.
