The US has allegedly been snooping on France for over a decade, intercepting communications of country officials and all corporate contracts valued at over $200m, according to new documents from WikiLeaks.
The documents have been revealed during the ongoing publications of top secret documents from the US surveillance operations against France, dubbed ‘Espionnage Élysée’.
The publications consist of seven documents which reveal the NSA’s efforts in obtaining intelligence from government policy, diplomacy, banking and participation in international bodies, infrastructural development, business practices and trade activities.
According to WikiLeaks, the NSA spied on the French Finance Minister, a French Senator, officials within the Treasury and Economic Policy Directorate, the French ambassador to the US, and officials with direct responsibility for EU trade policy.
It has been alleged that the NSA started spying on the French economic sector as early as 2002.
WikiLeaks said that some documents were authorised for sharing with NSA’s Anglophone partners, dubbed the Five Eyes group, which includes Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the economic espionage undertaken by the US against France covers all of the country’s major companies, from BNP Paribas, AXA and Credit Agricole to Peugeot, Renault, Total and Orange.
"The United States not only uses the results of this spying itself, but swaps these intercepts with the United Kingdom. Do French citizens deserve to know that their country is being taken to the cleaners by the spies of supposedly allied countries? Mais oui!"
