The trial laid bare two colliding views of globalisation, as well as the measures that a powerful company like LVMH would take to shield its reputation. If Ruffin was obsessed with holding Arnault to account, the billionaire was just as eager to push back on the filmmaker’s portrayal of him as a symbol of capitalist evil.
LVMH under the microscope
Ruffin’s movie, Merci Patron! or Thanks, Boss!, became a sleeper hit in France in 2016 and won a César award, the French equivalent of an Oscar. Made on a shoestring budget, it skewered LVMH as an avatar of heartless corporations.
As filming began in 2013, Fakir staff members distributed leaflets urging people to buy shares in LVMH to attend an upcoming shareholder meeting and protest job cuts. Their goal was to badger the LVMH boss into visiting Poix-du-Nord, an economic wasteland after the factory closures, and sit down with his ex-workers over a friendly meal of “moules frites” — mussels and fries.
One of the leaflets made its way into Arnault’s hands.
Soon after, Arnault’s secretary, Karine Billet, called Squarcini, who was head of France’s domestic intelligence service under President Nicolas Sarkozy. An anti-terrorism specialist known as the Shark, he had started a private agency, Kyrnos, after leaving the government. But in 2013, French investigators began wiretapping his phones on suspicions that he was improperly using his government connections to help clients, including LVMH. He now faces 11 charges, ranging from misusing public funds to compromising defence secrets.
Francois Ruffin arrives at the trial. Credit: Bloomberg
Billet told Squarcini that Fakir intended to “make a mess,” according to transcripts of the wiretaps made public during the trial.
“Leave it all to me,” Squarcini replied.
Pierre Godé, Arnault’s right-hand man for decades until his death in 2018, asked on another wiretapped call whether Squarcini could “infiltrate” Fakir.
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A spy game gone wrong
Squarcini outsourced the job, an assignment that eventually made its way to a French ex-intelligence agent who happened to have already gotten inside.
That man was Marc Foll.
Foll, whose real name is Albert Farhat, had earlier obtained a subscription to Fakir, gaining him a welcome in the group’s offices in northern France. During the trial, Farhat, a fidgety man who wore a hunting coat and large gold rings, testified that he was an independent journalist reporting on extremist groups.
He concluded that Fakir was mainly a “tool” for Ruffin’s political ambitions. But Squarcini had a different view: Fakir promoted violence, and needed to be watched.
Fakir members grew suspicious of the mole. “The guy was so weird that we finally said to ourselves that we had been infiltrated,” Ruffin said during the trial. They began sending him on wild goose chases to toy with him.
Arnault has turned LVMH into the world’s premier luxury group, with 75 brands.Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images
The day of the LVMH shareholders meeting, held in the Louvre Museum, Squarcini phoned Arnault’s secretary as the LVMH chief listened in, the wiretaps show, to say security would thwart Ruffin and a small band of ex-workers from confronting Arnault.
Ruffin and the others were shepherded into a side room — away from the grand hall where Arnault addressed Champagne-sipping attendees. When Ruffin began protesting, the group was ejected.
“Is Arnault happy?” Squarcini later asked the secretary. “Ah yes, he is very, very happy,” she exclaimed.
In an interview, Ruffin said that LVMH’s security response was disproportionate to his actions, but gelled with what he called a pattern of seeking to squelch critical media coverage. “We wanted to expose the hidden face of LVMH — that of a company that threw aside its workers,” he said. “They broke people.”
For Arnault, such actions reflect an adversarial view of business peculiar to France. In an interview with The New York Times last year, he pushed back against activists who depicted LVMH as an exploitative juggernaut.
“They need to find a type of enemy,” he said. “France is not a country which is motivated by business success, unlike the United States.”
Spared from ejection at the Louvre was Farhat, who shouted, “I’m the mole!” when Arnault’s security chief approached. Farhat was later kicked out of Fakir.
That did not stop the surveillance, which included spying on Ruffin near his home. Farhat roped in Marlène Mauboussin, a photographer who was homeless at the time, to infiltrate Fakir.
But the pictures she secretly snapped came out fuzzy. Her effort to make clandestine recordings of Merci Patron! flopped. She became sympathetic to the group and joined them.
Of the 2 million euros ($3.3 million) that LVMH ultimately paid Squarcini, 15,000 euros trickled down to Farhat; he paid 1,000 euros to Mauboussin.
A long crusade against Arnault
Ruffin was elected to Parliament in 2017, a year after Merci Patron! was released. He had long suspected that he had been spied on, but it was not until 2019, when reports emerged of the judicial investigation into Squarcini, that he realised the magnitude.
The probe revealed that LVMH had asked Squarcini to look into several dossiers, but the lengthiest operation was surveillance on Ruffin and Fakir from 2013 to 2016. Stunned, Ruffin and Fakir joined the judicial investigation as a civil party and eagerly waited to confront Arnault in court.
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But in 2021, Paris prosecutors offered LVMH a rare settlement allowing it to avoid criminal prosecution in exchange for a fine of 10 million euros. The company admitted no wrongdoing, and Arnault would not have to testify in public, allowing him to avoid an unwanted media circus.
That was mooted when the judge in the Squarcini case ordered Arnault to testify.
After being whisked past a horde of TV cameras, Arnault stood for three hours under a barrage of questioning.
“When I took over, we had 10,000 employees, now we have 200,000,” Arnault said. “We have a sense of pride in what we bring to this country” he said, adding that he had been “dismayed by the constant criticism” from Ruffin.
He said he had watched Merci, Patron! and found it “quite funny.” But he accused Ruffin, seated on the benches behind him, of seeking to profit from Arnault’s court presence by grabbing publicity for a new film he was working on about the lives of struggling workers.
Details of the surveillance were exposed during an influence-peddling trial last month concerning France’s former intelligence chief, Bernard Squarcini (centre), whom LVMH had hired for security work after he left the post in 2012.Credit: Bloomberg
“There is a quote from Trotskyist ideologies,” Arnault said. “When you want to emerge politically, find a well-known enemy and cling to him to progress.’”
He added that he was “absolutely unaware” of any surveillance, saying that orders given by Godé were taken without his knowledge. “What would we get from infiltrating a band of clowns?” he asked.
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But as Ruffin’s lawyer needled the billionaire with questions about ignoring workers and seeking to censor unflattering coverage, Arnault erupted in anger. “I will not answer these stupid questions!” he declared, crossing his arms and staring straight ahead.
In that case, the lawyer persisted, would Arnault agree, at long last, to visit Poix-du-Nord and speak with laid-off employees over moules frites?
“Let’s start with a meeting in Paris with Mr. Ruffin,” Arnault replied. “And then we’ll see.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
