PARIS — French politicians continue to be a prime target of Russian espionage efforts despite a crackdown on Moscow’s operations in France, newly released documents show.
French intelligence services have detected Russian spies trying to make contact with French lawmakers in recent months and have led operations to raise awareness among MPs on the risks of foreign interference, according to transcripts of parliamentary hearings released Thursday.
The head of France’s national intelligence service the DGSI warned MPs at a hearing in February that Russia was the most active foreign power, with “several dozen officers from Russia’s three intelligence agencies” using diplomatic cover to infiltrate France’s political system, the documents reveal. China, also a focus of the DGSI, was less likely to use officers under diplomatic cover, according to the hearings which were redacted before publication.
Since December, a parliamentary committee has been investigating foreign interference in France, conducting interviews with top intelligence figures behind closed doors. The creation of the committee was initiated last year by the far-right party National Rally in the wake of accusations of foreign interference against the far right.
The dozens of pages of interviews give an insight into the murky world of Russian spy operations in France, which include details of an agent posing as a student to get mathematics tutoring classes with a French engineer and another using a Brazilian passport to infiltrate the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
“We are in regular contact with MPs at their request or at our initiative, to raise awareness, and if needed, tell them who they are in contact with,” said Nicolas Lerner, the head of the DGSI, without giving details of how suspicious contact-making is flagged to French intelligence services.
“We have done it several times in recent months after detecting contacts with Russian intelligence officers under diplomatic cover,” he said, despite “a significant drop” in the number of Russian spies operating since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. According to Lerner, Moscow’s operations in France were curtailed in the agency’s “most significant counter-espionage operation in decades” which led to the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, six undercover spies and the closing of the Russian representation at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
While Lerner did not reveal the scale or the nature of Russia’s targeting of MPs since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he gave a glimpse of France’s counter-intelligence operations in the world of politics in recent years.
Lerner said that since the start of his tenure in 2018 he has met MPs, ministers and former ministers to remind them of “the risks of attaching their name to a certain company or board of representatives.” In 2022, the DGSI held 6,500 interviews with figures belonging to economic, university, research and political circles.
According to Lerner, the DGSI’s surveillance operations “very occasionally” led to suspicions or confirmations of “relations of another type” between an elected official and a foreign power. In one instance, the DGSI referred a case of a suspected offense involving “financing” to the relevant authorities.
“According to my information, there are individual approaches, and certain persons who entered into relationships that the French law does not allow — several examples come to mind,” he said.
Foreign interference in the world of politics became a hot topic in France in the wake of the war in Ukraine as several politicians came under scrutiny for alleged links to Russia. During his campaign for the presidential election, French President Emmanuel Macron accused far-right leader Marine Le Pen of “depending on Russian power” after her party took a loan with a Russian bank.
Asked by an MP belonging to Le Pen’s party National Rally whether French parties or politicians were under foreign influence, the head of the DGSI said he was not aware of a political party that was “the object of organized and systematic interference.”
“There’s no hold on [political parties], it’s more individual actions of seduction or personal belief … that we detect and that compel us to raise awareness,” he told the committee.
