Renault target of international spy ring

A boss of French automaker Renault said yesterday the company had been targeted by an international spy ring but claimed it had lost no major secrets in the affair which has seen top managers suspended.

The French government meanwhile refused to confirm reports that the three managers were supplying details of the company’s electric cars to China.

Renault number two Patrick Pelata told yesterday’s Le Monde daily that the inquiry that led to the suspensions had concluded that the carmaker was faced with “an organised system of collecting economic, technological and strategic information to serve foreign interests”.

“Renault is a victim of an organised international network” run by “professionals,” Pelata said.

But he said that “no nugget of technological or strategic information, including almost 200 patents registered or on the point of being registered, has filtered out”. The research programme on a new generation of batteries was also not concerned, Pelata said, adding that the electric vehicle development programme would carry on as planned.

But he admitted that details of the design and costs of the vehicles could have been leaked.

“That is serious but less than if the damage had concerned the technology,” he said.

Pelata confirmed that Renault would be taking legal action and said the three managers would be undergoing interviews preparatory to being sacked.

A lawyer for one of those suspended, Mathieu Tenenbaum, deputy head of Renault’s electric vehicles programme, spoke out last Friday, saying his client was “stunned” by the move.

He said Tenenbaum was made to leave tomorrow without any explanation but... “we know what you have done, you may as well admit it,” the lawyer, Thibault de Montbrial, told AFP in a statement.