Who is Gilles Bénichou, the Lyon crook who brought down Michel Neyret?

His chair is stubbornly empty. But by dint of hearing about it, one would almost believe to see his Bruce Willis face appear, shaved head and tanned skin, furrowed by the wrinkles of his fifties. Gilles Benichou seems absent because we don’t see him in this room”noted one of his lawyers, Philippe Dehapiot, at the opening of the trial of Michel Neyret, Monday May 2. Funny formula to underline the oddity of the situation: THE presumed corrupter of the former number 2 of the Lyon PJ, the man by whom the scandal happened, simply failed to take justice. At the last moment. Without telling his advice.

The court did not issue a warrant to compel Gilles Bénichou, r released under judicial supervision in June 2012, to appear. It would certainly have been necessary, for that, to postpone the trial. The defendant would still be in Villeurbanne (Rhône), his hometown.

It must be admitted: the news of his absence caused a wave of disappointment on the benches of the press. The journalists hoped to be able to understand the fall of a great cop by meeting at the hearing the thug who mainly worked there. Gilles Bénichou is not the only crook sent back to court in this case (his cousin Stéphane Alzraa, on the run, is too). But this colorful character appears as an essential link in the chain in the collapse of the former sleuth.

Compromising logorrhea

In this case of corruption, the telephone conversations of this man with the amazing logorrhea are central. Wiretapped in the context of international drug trafficking in early 2011, Gilles Bénichou boasts to his interlocutor – involved in said trafficking – of having “A joker” within the Lyon police, which “can’t do anything [lui] refuse”. Investigators quickly identify Michel Neyret.

From there, the General Inspectorate of Services (ex-IGPN), the police force, will have a lot of elements to put in their mouths, so much Gilles Bénichou is talkative on the phone, whether with his friend policeman or his other relations. The ox-carrots discover with dismay that Michel Neyret sends police files at the request of this figure from the Lyon environment, whom he sees two or three times a week and whom he has on the telephone every day. The list of the officer’s interventions for Gilles Bénichou lengthens over the course of the investigation and the conversations. Some are proven, others are fantasized by haddock.

“Little by little, Gilles Bénichou will position himself as an essential intermediary, to assert himself on all sides”explains to francetv info, Richard Schittly, journalist at Progress and author of a book about the downfall of the former anti-gang star. Gilles Bénichou introduces Michel Neyret to his cousin Stéphane Alzraa, a high-flying crook, specializing in carbon tax fraud, whom the former police officer says he wanted to approach to penetrate “the Jewish mafia”. On the telephone, Gilles Bénichou says wrongly and through that he is “the most important person in the world for Michel Neyret”that he will become the “godfather” of his daughter.

“You rotted it for me, Michel”

Listening to the president of the court reminding him of these words, Michel Neyret just seems to realize the risks he took by attending too closely this individual.

Monsieur Bénichou often makes me say things that I didn’t say. He used my name a little too often.

During the investigation, the superintendent had recognized him: i He no longer considered Gilles Bénichou as an informant but as “a friend”. “A friend” with which he displayed himself shamelessly in front of the whole of Lyon, ignoring the basic security rules concerning informants. Was he unaware that this “uncle” had been removed from the list of police informants in 2000 for his lack of reliability? Did he know the legal past of this racketeer, convicted nine times, between 1996 and 2009, for tax evasion, transport of counterfeit money, extortion, and kidnapping? With regard to Gilles Bénichou, the former police chief admits having shown a certain “blindly”, voluntary or not. Journalist Richard Shittly depicts between the two men a “very strong relationship”, “a rather curious bond of friendship”of which it is “complicated to analyze all the springs”. In front of the investigators, Michel Neyret portrays an endearing character, with “strong family values”with whom he talks about everything, his children, religion.

And then there is the money. “D Since you’ve been giving him money, it’s not the same. Because sir he goes out, sir he goes spend (…). He spends everything in champagne, in his evenings (…). Don’t give him any more change, otherwise he’ll go to the casino. He will drink cannons and pay for the chicks. You ruined it for me, Michel. (…) Now he is more of a thug than the others. But stop, stop, he’s obsessed with money, money, money”, loose Nicole Neyret in a conversation with Gilles Bénichou. At the hearing, the wife, tried alongside her husband for concealment of passive corruption, tried to minimize his remarks. But the facts are there. Gilles Benichou showered his benefactor with gifts. Stays in luxurious villas in Morocco, on the Côte d’Azur and in Corsica, Chopard and Cartier watches… The bill amounts to one “sum a little less than 30,000 euros”, calculates the president. A mark of friendship, proportional to the standard of living of his “friend”according to Michel Neyret. “An investment in the future”for Gilles Benichou.

“Commedia dell’Arte”

Because the scammer does not lose sight of his objective: to obtain information from the policeman, which he monetizes with his sulphurous relations. “ I’m selling you the truth”, says Gilles Bénichou to a man on the run. Curious reversal of roles. In the police-indicator relationship, “it is the informant who must provide information, not the other way around” underlines at the trial an ex-colleague of Michel Neyret. A reversal of the situation symbolized by a photo, taken on the set of Lyonnais. Michel Neyret, who knows director Olivier Marchal well, has obtained a role as an extra for his friend. Gilles Bénichou, actor in his spare time, plays a gendarme there. To perfect his interpretation, he goes so far as to handcuff the divisional commissioner.

Only the trial seems to have decillated Michel Neyret on his friend’s double game. “ I think Mr. Benichou was a great manipulator, even if I have a hard time admitting it”he breathes at the bar.

Today, I consider that it was a friend who betrayed me.

Over the course of the debates, the former cop no longer minces his words with regard to the Ray Ban snubber, described as a “mythomaniac”, a megalomaniac “the evil spirit”A “a talker who knows the Jewish environment by heart”. “Commedia dell’arte”, summarizes for her part Nicole Neyret, who claims to have been fooled by Gilles Benichou when he took her to Switzerland to open an account for her and her husband (in reality a Panamanian company with an account in Dubai). “He’s quite an attractive and interesting person, but with all the risks that this kind of personality can entail”analyzes a former relative on condition of anonymity. “When you befriend a guy like that, it’s like a race car. If it skids, you take the tree”he metaphorizes, summoning the image of Michel Neyret at the wheel of a Ferrari loaned by the cousin of Gilles Bénichou, Stéphane Alzraa.

“A Hungry for Money”

On the phone, Gilles Bénichou, who boasts on his acting profile of having trained at the Actors Studio in New York, proves to be a real chameleon, capable of changing register with each interlocutor. In his psychological and psychiatric expertise, the experts note that this “histrion” maintains a reciprocal seduction in his affective and social relationships, while being aware of his manipulative personality traits. Its main driver, according to them: a “money hungry” born of a modest childhood with a municipal worker father and a stay-at-home mother, when the rest of the family was much better off.

For Richard Schittly, this salesman who abandoned his law studies after a baccalaureate G, has the “typical profile of the crook, who must always be in a composition role”. According to the journalist, the risk was too great, by appearing at the trial, that the mask would fall. “There was a lot of defense to put forward”judge on the contrary his lawyer, Philippe Dehapiot.

Michel Neyret regretted his absence on several occasions. “I suffer from the fact that Gilles Benichou did not come to this bar to explain this relationship which brought us closer”, dropped the defendant, like a confidence. In this relationship tied to two, the prosecution believes that Michel Neyret has a responsibility. That of being “left to corrupt”. He faces ten years in prison for this. Gilles Bénichou incurs the same penalty for active corruption of a person holding public authority.

Gilles Bénichou was sentenced in his absence by the Paris Criminal Court, on July 5, 2016, to five years in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros. He did not appeal his conviction after his arrest in Morocco in 2018, franceinfo learned from a judicial source. Michel Neyret was sentenced on appeal in June 2018 to two and a half years in prison for corruption. This is the same sentence as that pronounced at first instance, but it has been increased by an 18-month suspended sentence.