Jean-Louis Gergorin

Jean-Louis Gergorin is a French cybersecurity expert,^[1] strategy consultant, former diplomat and former executive vice president of EADS – the giant European aerospace company that controls Airbus.
He was at the origin of the Clearstream 2 scandal in France, which raised much turmoil in the French political life from 2006 to 2010. He was later found in this case guilty of slanderous denunciation, and use of forgery.

Education[]

Gergorin was educated at two top French schools, the École Polytechnique and École Nationale d'Administration. Gergorin was also a research fellow at the RAND Corporation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government and is a graduate of the Executive Education Program at Stanford Business School.

Career[]

In 1973, Gergorin was cofounder and deputy head of the Policy Planning Staff of the French Foreign Ministry. From 1979 to 1984 he was Director of Policy Planning, reporting directly to the French Foreign Minister.

In November 1984 he joined the aerospace group Matra as Senior Vice President for Strategy,^[2] starting a close association with CEO Jean-Luc Lagardère that lasted until Lagardère’s sudden death in March 2003. Between 1998 and 2000, together with Lagardère and Co-CEO, Philippe Camus, Gergorin played a major role in the series of national and transnational mergers that triggered the formation of EADS – the world’s second largest aerospace company.

During his time at EADS, Gergorin served as Executive Vice President for Strategy,^[3] member of the Executive Committee, and as a member of the Shareholder’s Committee (Board of Directors) for its Airbus subsidiary. In this final capacity, Gergorin was particularly active in the expansion of EADS in the U.S. and U.K. markets.

Strategy and Cybersecurity Consultant[]

On 26 April 2007, Jean-Louis Gergorin founded the company JLG Strategy,^[4] which provides strategy consulting , particularly in the fields of aerospace, defence and especially cyber.^[5] In 2014, he founded and became a member of the steering committee of the French American Cybersecurity Conference.^[6] In November 2018, he published Cyber, la guerre permanente with Léo Isaac-Dognin, which offers a geopolitical analysis of the main cyber incidents since the beginning of the 2000s, and the stakes involved. The book was widely reviewed by the press at the time of its publication.^[7][8][9] He was invited to speak on these issues in 2019 and 2021 at the Word Policy Conference, an IFRI initiative;^[10] he also spoke at the Normandy World Forum for Peace. In 2020, he joined the scientific committee of the International Cybersecurity Forum.^[11] He is regularly interviewed on the subject by major French and American media, and participates in several organisations and professional conferences in this field. Thus, since 2020, he has co-written three articles in the newspaper Le Monde, with Bernard Barbier, former technical director of the DGSE, and Admiral Edouard Guillaud, former chief of staff of the French armed forces, on the current and even more future importance of cyber issues: , the need to implement the concept of cyber coercion in a logic of deterrence,^[12] the imperative need for a national strategy in this area and the lack of European preparedness in this area,^[13] particularly in the Pegasus affair.^[14]

He is also quoted by the Washington Post on the Biden administration's evolving cyber doctrine.^[15]

The Clearstream Scandal[]

In May 2006, Gergorin admitted that he had anonymously sent a list of various political figures and businesspersons who were allegedly involved in a large money laundering scheme to the French Investigative Magistrate, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, in 2004.
The case, known as Clearstream 2, was widely followed in the press in France, as this list contained the name of future President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and it turned out later that his name was added to the list by either Gergorin or Lahoud, who was working for him. Gergorin has stated publicly that he and Magistrate Van Ruymbeke met and agreed on this course of action for security concerns.^[16]

Gergorin was subsequently put under investigation for transmitting these lists and the investigation proved that many of the names in Gergorin’s transmission had been fabricated. This discovery caused Gergorin to leave his position at EADS.

Throughout this matter, Gergorin has maintained that he sent the information to the magistrate in good faith because he was totally convinced of the authenticity of his information and the truthfulness of his source - a mathematician turned computer expert named Imad Lahoud.

In 2007 Gergorin published a book named Rapacités (Greed) in which he publicly articulated his claim to have been a good faith whistleblower who has been framed through for his willingness to understand the causes of the unexpected death of Lagardère.^[17]

It turned out during investigations and at the trial that Gergorin had asked Lahoud to add names to the list.

On October 20, 2009, the public prosecutor requested 18 months in prison and a 45,000 € fine against Jean-Louis Gergorin. On January 28, 2010, he was found guilty of slanderous denunciation, use of forgery, concealment of breach of trust and theft, and sentenced to 3 years in prison including 15 months firm prison and 40,000 euros fine by the Paris criminal court. The judgment was relentless to Mr. Gergorin, describing him as “the initiator and the principal author of the crimes of slanderous denunciations”. He appealed the decision. The Court of Appeal of Paris the Court of Appeal did not follow this analysis, and partially reversed the decision on September 14, 2011, maintaining the fine and prison time sentence, but reducing firm imprisonment time to 6 month. The Court released him for the charges of forgery, concealment of breach of trust and theft. However he was still convicted for use of forgery and slanderous denunciations to juge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, as he had been previously informed by General Rondot of the results of his unconclusive inquiry regarding the authenticity of the Clearstream listings.^[18]

The Court of Appeal states:

“it appears rather, as explained above, that when they got together, Jean-Louis Gergorin confided in Imad Lahoud about his obsessions and fears and gave him names, and that Imad Lahoud, in order to bait Jean-Louis Gergorin and to ensure his own status of protégé, took the initiative of making up the false listings by including these names, among many others, thus creating a system of dirty money laundering. (…) if the benefit of good faith can be granted to Jean Louis Gergorin for the handing over of documents in November 2003 to General Rondot, it cannot be granted for the sending, six months later, to Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, when the verifications requested by him and carried out by General Rondot did not in any way validate the information transmitted, but, on the contrary, invalidated it, which Jean-Louis Gergorin knew^[19]"

His revision claim was dismissed by the Court of Cassation on February 27, 2013, making the previous conviction final.[6]

Awards and activities[]

Gergorin has been the recipient of various honors and awards; most notably sharing the 1989 Aviation Week Laureate Award with Jean-Luc Lagardère and Philippe Camus. Gergorin was later inducted into the Aviation Week "Laureates Hall of Fame" at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.^[20]

Gergorin spoke at the 1998 Bilderberg Meeting and was a guest at the 1997, 2002, and 2003 Bilderberg meetings.^[21]

Gergorin has also been credited as the organizer of “high-level” discussions concerning France’s strained relationship with the United States after the reelection of George W. Bush to the Presidency of the United States.

The talks involved American diplomats including Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as well as a “similarly illustrious” list of French officials.^[22]

Current[]

Jean-Louis Gergorin lectures at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris^[23].
He is a member of Institut Aspen.^[24]

References[]