{"id":308,"date":"2026-03-30T07:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/308\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T07:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:50:09","slug":"french-masonic-lodge-at-heart-of-murky-murder-trial-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/308\/","title":{"rendered":"French masonic lodge at heart of murky murder trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-two people are to stand trial in France<\/a> from Monday on charges of murder<\/a> and other serious crimes centred on a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads.<\/p>\n

Seven of the defendants — who include former intelligence agents, soldiers and businessmen — risk life imprisonment.<\/p>\n

The 22 are accused of murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy on behalf of a mafia network inside the Athanor Masonic Lodge in the Paris suburb of Puteaux.<\/p>\n

At least four freemasons from the 20 or so members of the lodge are in the dock.<\/p>\n

Other defendants include four officers from France’s DGSE foreign intelligence service, three police officers, six business executives, a security guard, a doctor and an engineer.<\/p>\n

Most of the accused, aged between 30 and 73, have no previous criminal records.<\/p>\n

The alleged ringleaders are Athanor freemasons Jean-Luc Bagur, Frederic Vaglio and Daniel Beaulieu. They face life in jail if convicted.<\/p>\n

So does Beaulieu’s right-hand man Sebastien Leroy, who is accused of carrying out the trio’s dirty work himself or through a hit-man network.<\/p>\n

The case was triggered by a botched contract killing in July 2020, when two members of France’s parachute regiment were arrested in possession of weapons near the home of business coach Marie-Helene Dini.<\/p>\n

Under questioning, they said they thought they had been asked to murder Dini on behalf of the French state on the grounds that she worked for Israeli spy agency Mossad.<\/p>\n

Escalating crimes <\/p>\n

Investigators discovered a link to Bagur, who is a business coach rival of Dini’s as well as being the 69-year-old “venerable master” of the Athanor lodge.<\/p>\n

Investigators say Bagur asked fellow freemason Vaglio to arrange to have his rival eliminated for a fee of 70,000 euros ($80,600).<\/p>\n

Vaglio, a 53-year-old entrepreneur, allegedly acted as the intermediary between the big boss and a hit squad working for fellow Athanor freemason Beaulieu, a retired agent for the domestic intelligence service (DGSI).<\/p>\n

The leader of the hit squad, Leroy, admitted in police custody that he or his associates carried out most of the Athanor mafia’s assaults, robberies and murders — including the killing of a racing car driver.<\/p>\n

As time went on, the crimes ordered by the freemason mafia escalated from petty revenge attacks to homicide.<\/p>\n

In a case of industrial espionage, Leroy’s gang allegedly assaulted a businesswoman in the street and snatched her computer.<\/p>\n

The car of one of Bagur’s associates went up in flames in 2019 after she discovered evidence of financial fraud within his company.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the body of racing driver Laurent Pasquali was found in a forest.<\/p>\n

He had been bumped off, according to French media, allegedly for not paying a debt he owed to friends of Vaglio’s.<\/p>\n

‘Terrifying’ <\/p>\n

Leroy, who left the military to become a security guard, told police he thought he had been acting all the time on behalf of the government.<\/p>\n

He complained that Beaulieu had “manipulated” him and dangled the idea of him becoming an informant for the DGSI spy agency.<\/p>\n

“What my client found terrifying is the fact that the key figures in this case — police officers, former DGSI agents and freemasons — are precisely the people who are supposed to act for the good of society,” said Dini’s lawyer Jean-William Vezinet.<\/p>\n

It is unclear what information the prosecution may be able to elicit from Beaulieu.<\/p>\n

He made an apparent attempt to kill himself in police custody, which left him disabled and with “impaired concentration”, his lawyer told AFP.<\/p>\n

The trial is expected to run for at least three months.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-two people are to stand trial in France from Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[121,5,331,332],"class_list":{"0":"post-308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-murder","11":"tag-trial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}