"EDF fined €1.5m for spying on Greenpeace"

By Hanna Gersmann (in The Guardian.uk)

Date: 10.11.2011

Abstract:
      France's state energy firm EDF has been fined €1.5m by a Paris court for spying on Greenpeace.

Quotation:
[...] "EDF and Greenpeace have fought for years over France's power production, more than three-quarters of it nuclear. According to confidential court testimony released by a French website, Mediapart, two years ago, EDF had organised surveillance not only of Greenpeace in France, but broadly across Europe since 2004.
In 2006, EDF hired a detective agency, Kargus Consultants, run by a former member of France's secret services, to find out about Greenpeace France's intentions and its plan to block new nuclear plants in the UK. The agency hacked the computer of Yannick Jadot, Greenpeace's then campaigns director, taking 1,400 documents."

[...] "The outrage among anti-nuclear campaigners echoes that which emerged when it was revealed that France's secret services were behind the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior 26 years ago. Moreover, safety is a very live issue since Japan's Fukushima disaster. In March, only weeks later, EDF boss Vincent de Rivaz said its plan to build four reactors in the UK would be unaffected, starting at Hinkley Point in Somerset" [...]

[...] "Speaking from alongside the new Rainbow Warrior, currently on its maiden voyage and docked in London, Greenpeace UK's executive director, John Sauven, said: "The evidence presented at the trial showed that the espionage undertaken by EDF in its efforts to discredit Greenpeace was both extensive and totally illegal. The company should now give a full account of the spying operation it mounted against its critics. As one of the six companies with a monopoly over electricity supply in this country and a major sponsor of the Olympics, EDF has a duty to come clean. The length of the sentences handed down shows just how seriously the judge views what the French state owned company did."

Index terms:
Greenpeace, nuclear, EDF, spy

Found with: RSS feed of the web site The Guardian
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/10/edf-spying-greenpeace


M.G