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Web of intrigue uncovered at French TV channel

It has all the ingredients of a fast-moving thriller. A spy who had just come in from the cold, well, London. A deep throat who gave him the records of the mobile phone his target was using. A plot hatched to plant drugs on the target's scooter. A plan to hire a prostitute who would claim she had been raped by him.

Except that this is not a tale from the underworld of French espionage, but a snapshot of staff relations at Canal Plus, France's premier cable television channel.

Gilles Kaehlin, the head of security at Canal Plus, was forced to resign on Wednesday amid a flurry of writs and allegations which started when Pierre Martinet, a former spy, published a book in which he claimed he was asked to dig dirt on the company's leading executives.

Martinet accused his former employers at Canal Plus, without naming them, of asking him to spy on a dozen top executives, including the man known as the Che Guevara of the channel, Bruno Gaccio, the creator of the political satire Les Guignols de l'info, France's version of Spitting Image.

Martinet, a former French secret service agent, claims he was asked to plant drugs on Gaccio's scooter or to entrap him with a prostitute who would later claim he had raped her. Martinet said he worked in a special "cell" in Canal Plus, composed of a dozen specialists in information -- former policemen and tax inspectors -- in a department headed by Kaehlin.

At first the tasks Martinet had to perform were innocent. He was asked to track down the addresses of the people who had pirate decoders. But alarm bells rang when he was told to bug the hotel room of the head of an organization competing with Canal Plus for a contract.

"That night my eyes were opened," he wrote in his book, An Agent Emerges from the Shadows. "It was all getting out of hand, and my boss was about to cross the white line."

Martinet was then told to watch Gaccio, who was codenamed Golf. He hired a scooter and followed Gaccio to find out whether the man regarded as a troublemaker by the new management of Canal Plus had any dealings with the company's former management.

"I had tracked down Islamists, and now I was supposed to tail [the man who created] the Guignols on the telly. It was ridiculous. I knew I was not going to do anything against him. I did not serve the republic to end up doing this," Martinet told Le Monde.

In the most bizarre episode, he was told to go to Nanterre, in front of the offices of the Ministry of the Interior, where he was given a brown envelope by a policeman known as "Moist Hands." The envelope contained 66 pages of Gaccio's mobile phone records.

A man believed to be the officer in question has turned himself in.

A police spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that an inquiry had been started.

"The policeman implicated in this affair admitted his role to his superiors," he said. "He wanted to help, but the inquiry will determine whether there was a financial incentive [for his actions] as well."

Canal Plus issued a statement saying that Kaehlin had resigned in order to be able to reply "freely and fully to the allegations of which he is the object".

Gaccio has issued a writ against whoever is eventually found to be responsible "for invasion of privacy and confidentiality of correspondence," and a former employee of Canal Plus, Michel Rocher, has done the same.

Martinet has now written to the prosecutor in Paris, offering his testimony.

Asked by Le Parisien whether he had resigned or been paid off by Canal Plus, he replied: "Make a guess."
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