Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

French police arrest Luxembourg former top spy

  • Luxembourg, a financial services hub, is one of EU's smallest states (Photo: Jimmy Reu)

French police have arrested a former Luxembourg spy chief, who was suing EUobserver for criminal libel, in an unrelated US fraud case.

Police in the French region of Audun-le-Tiche, on the Franco-Luxembourgish border, detained Frank Schneider on 29 April on an international arrest warrant issued by a court in New York, according to French local newspaper Le Républican Lorrain.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

  • A French SWAT team intercepted Frank Schneider as he was returning to Luxembourg from France (Photo: chd.lu)

His arrest involved special police from France's Brigade de recherche et d'intervention, a SWAT-type unit, the Paris-based website Intelligence Online added.

Schneider is a former chief of operations in Luxembourg's intelligence agency, the Service de Renseignement de l'État Luxembourgeois (SREL).

He is currently being held in the French town of Nancy pending a US extradition request.

His arrest came in connection with a US probe into a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme by the firm OneCoin, worth over $4bn [€3.3bn] - the largest such form of fraud in history.

OneCoin had hired Schneider's private-investigator firm, Sandstone, back in 2015.

And Sandstone, in turn, hired a British PR firm, Chelgate, to lobby on OneCoin's behalf in London for over £40,000 (€46,500) a month, according to an ex-Chelgate employee who spoke to a BBC documentary on the case.

Schneider, in 2019, had also sued EUobserver for criminal libel in Luxembourg and threatened to do so in Belgium, in what leading NGOs called a malicious attack on free press.

He did so after this website reported he had worked with Chelgate to spread disinformation about Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist who was murdered in 2017.

But a Luxembourg court threw out his case.

Schneider left the SREL in 2008.

He was also involved in an illegal wiretapping case prior to his departure from the service, which led to the fall from office of then Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, before Juncker subsequently became European Commission president.

EUobserver under attack in wider battle for EU free press

If EU citizens want to know the truth, then journalists need protection from malicious litigation, as EUobserver joined the list of targets, over an article about the late Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

EU Parliament set to sue EU Commission over Hungary funds

The European Parliament will likely take the European Commission to court for unblocking more than €10bn in funds for Hungary last December. A final nod of approval is still needed by European Parliament president, Roberta Metsola.

EU Commission clears Poland's access to up to €137bn EU funds

The European Commission has legally paved the way for Poland to access up to €137bn EU funds, following Donald Tusk's government's efforts to strengthen the independence of their judiciary and restore the rule of law in the country.

Opinion

Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers

The UN could launch an independent international investigation into Navalny's killing, akin to investigation I conducted on Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, or on Navalny's Novichok poisoning, in my role as special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, writes the secretary-general of Amnesty International.

Opinion

I'll be honest — Moldova's judicial system isn't fit for EU

To state a plain truth: at present, Moldova does not have a justice system worthy of a EU member state; it is riven with corruption and lax and inconsistent standards, despite previous attempts at reform, writes Moldova's former justice minister.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us