A massive espionage activity was caught very gently
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By nature, the French are very liberal, tolerant and accommodating nation. Even in matters of espionage, they do not lose their heads, unless something very serious matter is involved. They also do not make noise over these matters. That is the reason that such a big spy scandal involving such a large number of people did not find much space in the newspapers during the time of cold-war.
In April, 1983, forty diplomats posted at the Russian (Soviet Union) Embassy in Paris and seven other persons got orders to leaves France immediately. Amongst them was the First Counselor Nicholas Chetverikov. The French government charged that those people were all engaged in objectionable activity. They wanted to establish a purely leftist government in France.
There were some 2,400 Soviet Union's (Russian) citizens in France at that time and nearly 700 out of them held diplomatic passports. The Russian authorities were expressed surprise and claimed that they were not involved in subversive and illegal activities. At the same time, the counter-espionage wing of the French intelligence services DST arrested five French citizens for passing confidential documents. Amongst them were Patrick Guerrier, employed in an Engineering firm and Monsieur Juge was an Engineer. They were accused of passing secret documents to the Soviet (Russian) trade mission officials.
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The Soviet Union did not take any retaliatory measures on this matter. The American (U.S.) intelligence source opined that the French must have been in possession of incontrovertible evidence against these people, otherwise the Russians would have reacted.
The newspapers called this episode as that of “Group-47”.
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