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French think-tank chief convicted of spiked-drink rape bid

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
French think-tank chief convicted of spiked-drink rape bid
A French police logo on a police car. (Photo by FRED TANNEAU / AFP)

A Paris court on Thursday convicted the former chief of an influential Paris think-tank of attempted rape after he admitted to spiking a colleague's glass of champagne with ecstasy.

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Laurent Bigorgne, a political analyst and close associate of President Emmanuel Macron, was handed a suspended one-year prison sentence and fined €2,000.

Prosecutors had declined to charge Bigorgne with attempted sexual assault of Sophie Conrad, his colleague at the Institut Montaigne think-tank and also the sister of his former wife.

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But the court upheld the assault charge after determining that Bigorgne had drugged her drink during a dinner at his home "in order to commit rape or sexual assault."

Bigorgne was not present in court, but his lawyer Sebastien Schapira said he would appeal a "senseless, incoherent decision."

During the trial that began last month, Bigorgne admitted to taking cocaine the night of February 22, when he drugged Conrad in what he called "an outrageous, odious and cowardly act," but denied any intentions of assault.

Conrad, who managed to get to a hospital after feeling the drug's effects, told the court she had "no doubt about the fact that his intention was sexual and to rape me."

"This acknowledges what happened and the facts, a complete acknowledgement," she said after the ruling.

The accusations against Bigorgne stunned the elite political and think-tank circles of Paris, where he was known as a formidable networker close to the centre of power.

He provided input to Macron's successful 2017 presidential election, while his former wife had lent Macron an apartment the year before to help launch his upstart political party. 

Bigorgne quit the centre-right Institut Montaigne, which he had led for 11 years, less than a week after the charges emerged.

He later told Le Monde newspaper that after his resignation he had spent time in a psychiatric hospital and underwent treatment for cocaine use.

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