Nobody saw anything. Not one seems to have questioned his way of talking a hundred miles an hour and his constant agitation. Have they only noticed the frantic pace of the days of this pale man with myopic eyes? Did they wonder how he held up in this series of breakfasts at the Hôtel Bristol with an adviser from the Elysée, followed by meetings with diplomats, lunch with a big boss, speaking at a conference, to finally fall asleep during a premiere at the Opera? Did they talk about the hundred text messages he could send in the same day?
Before the lawyer called upon by the Institut Montaigne to conduct the investigation into the behavior of its former director, Laurent Bigorgne, not one of the twenty-five collaborators of this influential think tank with governments and companies “does not indicate that he was aware of the fact that Mr. Bigorgne was using cocaine”.
Lawyer William Feugère, graduate of Sciences Po in 1995, a year before Laurent Bigorgne, who signed the ten laconic pages of the internal investigation report, sent on June 24 to the president of the Institut Montaigne, Henri de Castries, raised even more “the unanimous surprise” teams on learning of the custody of their director, on February 25, after his ex-sister-in-law Sophie Conrad filed a complaint against him. She accuses him of having drugged her by slipping crystals of MDMA, a form of ecstasy, into a glass of champagne that he had offered her, at home, which he recognized and that medical expertise confirmed .
Sophie Conrad also accuses him of having intended to rape her, a sexual motive that Laurent Bigorgne denies and which was not retained by the investigation prior to the trial, which will open at the Paris Criminal Court on Thursday November 10, and in which the Institut Montaigne filed a civil action to protect its reputation. Mr. Bigorgne risks up to five years in prison for “administration of harmful substances” with two aggravating circumstances: that of having acted “under the manifest influence of narcotics” and to have resulted in more than eight days of incapacity for work.
On the fence
Laurent Bigorgne, 48, is not known to the general public. Power circles, yes. Ten months ago, his name was regularly cited as that of a possible future minister, in the event of the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. He may have resigned from the Institut Montaigne and know that all those who knew him until then could read in the newspapers the dozens of messages with a sexual connotation that he sent to his ex-sister-in-law, exhumed by the police. , Laurent Bigorgne continues to cling to this old world to which he no longer quite belongs.
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