Renault’s 2011 Spy Scandal

Renault’s 2011 spy scandal

The Facts

In early 2011, French carmaker Renault found itself embroiled in a high-profile industrial espionage scandal: the company was claiming to be the victim of a foreign predator. It started with an anonymous poison-pen letter: someone began sending anonymous notes, alleging that top members of Renault's electric car team were taking bribes.

Renault ordered its internal security team to open an investigation. Although facts were thin on the ground, the allegation was that three executives were paid money into bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. In return they allegedly handed over secrets about Renault's 4bn euro ($5.6bn) electric car plan. These three men were dismissed after being observed and spied on for several months: Michel Balthazard, director of advanced engineering; his deputy, Bertrand Rochette; and Matthieu Tenenbaum, deputy director of the electric cars division. In the following days they were formally sacked, as Renault filed suit for "theft, breach of trust … and industrial espionage".

As for the supposed beneficiaries of the spying, they were never identified. China was suspected, but there was no evidence.

There was no evidence of anything, and the three suspects loudly protested their innocence. France's domestic intelligence agency DCRI (Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence) opened its own investigation and established that the accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein did not actually exist. Then it discovered that the source of the allegations was a single anonymous informer. This man's identity was known only to Renault's internal security official Dominique Gevrey, and he refused to divulge it. Finally, it emerged that the “anonymous informer” had already been paid some 250,000 euros by Renault. And he was demanding 900,000 euros more for written proof of what he claimed.

Renault management was exposed as reckless, paranoid and dysfunctional and the company's international image...