Matthew Campbell and Chris Gourlay
THE French energy giant EDF hired private investigators to spy on Greenpeace in Britain as the company was seeking to build the next generation of UK nuclear power stations.
[business.timesonline.co.uk] Inquiries by The Sunday Times have revealed how private detectives hacked into computer systems at a time when the environmental group was planning a legal challenge to EDF’s UK aspirations.
It is also claimed that the investigators informally consulted contacts at MI5 about Greenpeace, including the possibility of it being “infiltrated” by eco-terrorists.
The spying operation was authorised by senior executives at EDF’s head office in Paris and has sparked a French judicial investigation.
EDF, which is controlled by the French state and is Britain’s biggest electricity producer, denies that it sanctioned any illegal activities.
Last night Greenpeace described the revelations as “scandalous” while Chris Huhne, home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said he would table parliamentary questions to establish whether British security agencies had exchanged any information about environmental groups with EDF or the French government.
“It is bad enough being watched by a Big Brother state in Britain, let alone by another country’s Big Brother state and its state electricity company,” said Huhne.
Last week Thierry Lorho, a former French intelligence officer, described how EDF hired Kargus Consultants, his private investigation agency, to carry out surveillance on Greenpeace.
“We wanted to know who the leaders were in Britain,” said Lorho. “There was a need to know how Greenpeace was structured in other European countries.”
Lorho acknowledged that he had broken French law by organising the hacking of Greenpeace’s French computer system, but insisted he was following instructions from EDF security officials who have since been suspended. “They hired me to do it,” he said.
Lorho said the hacking had been necessary in order to find out about illegal plans by protesters to stage sit-ins at nuclear sites in Europe.
He said that he had done nothing illegal in Britain where, he added, information was gathered largely through public sources such as the internet.
The majority of his efforts were in France. Lorho claimed that monitoring of Greenpeace in Britain and other European countries amounted to about 10% of the intelligence gathering that he conducted for EDF.
Yet confidential court documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal how hacking into Greenpeace’s international computer network potentially gave EDF access to files and e-mail correspondence generated by Greenpeace UK.
One of the Greenpeace files found on a CD by French police in a safe at EDF headquarters is entitled “Campaign plan for the rest of 2006 and 2007”. Another is called “Priorities 2006”.
In 2006 Greenpeace UK was planning to launch a legal challenge to plans by EDF to build nuclear power plants across Britain. Greenpeace argued that a government consultation on nuclear power was flawed.
It is also understood that Kargus shared information about Greenpeace with “contacts at MI5”.
“[Both parties believed] Greenpeace could be manipulated by outside interests, that it could easily be infiltrated by terrorists,” said a source close to the French judicial investigation.
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “It’s time this government came clean about the role of the security services in spying on environmental organisations.”
Targeting Greenpeace has been taboo in France since 1985, when French agents bombed Rainbow Warrior, the environmental group’s ship, killing a photographer on board. Members of the DGSE, France’s overseas intelligence service, blew up the ship in Auckland harbour.
Last night a senior Whitehall official denied that MI5 had had any dealings with Kargus Consultants. “The security service [M15] has absolutely no involvement in monitoring Greenpeace or other environmental groups,” said the official.
“Greenpeace has nothing to do with national security.”
EDF’s Paris head office said the company “wholeheartedly condemns any method aimed at obtaining information illegally”, but acknowledged that it “constantly monitors information that may affect its activity”.
EDF in the UK refused to confirm whether Greenpeace’s British activities had been targeted.
“Unfortunately, we do not have the content of [the Kargus] contract, as the single copy is under scrutiny by the French justice [authorities],” EDF said.
Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article6169017.ece
