La Mode Verte
Environmental Awareness Through Media ProductionsArchive for Kargus
EDF Employees Jailed for Spying on Greenpeace
www.bbc.co.uk 10th November 2011
Two EDF employees have been jailed after a French court ruled they had been spying on Greenpeace campaigners. The energy company was also fined €1.5 million. The court found that the energy company had employed security firm Kargus to spy on Greenpeace’s campaign against new nuclear reactors in France. Two Kargus employees were also jailed and Greenpeace was handed €500,000 in damages. Greenpeace’s campaign had focussed on the development of a new European Pressurised Water Reactor in the Normandy town of Flammanville. EDF had intended to build four of the same reactors in the UK. Lawyers defending the energy giant insisted that Kargus had been hired merely to monitor the activists and that the security firm had gone too far. The French court found differently however and jailed Pascal Durieux and Pierre-Paul Francois, head and deputy head of EDF’s nuclear security operation, for three years. Greenpeace has been on the wrong side of the French government, which owns EDF, before. In 1985, the charity’s chip Rainbow Warrior was sunk by the French intelligence services to prevent them from interfering with nuclear testing in the Pacific. One activist died.
