Internet "Pioneer" Is A Skeevy Pimp (UPDATED)

[Jimmy H.]

Niel has been sentenced. See Update in my second post.
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I am glad I could find something in English for this:

(From Easybourse.com)

Iliad Founder Xavier Niel Faces Embezzling Charges
Vendredi 15 septembre 2006 / 11h11

PARIS -(Dow Jones)- The founder of one of France's most successful internet companies, Xavier Niel, went on trial this week for embezzling funds from a sex shop in the city of Strasbourg.
Niel is the founder and chief executive of Iliad SA (403591.FR), which has made its mark by offering low cost triple play services including internet, telephone and television connections.
Iliad is now the second largest broadband provider in France. The company declined to comment on the court hearing.
The trial started Thursday and is being held in Paris at the chambre de tribunal correctionnel. It will last until Sept. 21.
Niel is accused of embezzling EUR5,000 a month from the sex shop over the past three years.

--Nina Sovich, Dow Jones Newswires

The trial is now going on, but strangely there is nothing in English about it yet (all the other recent articles are about Niel's technological and financial achievements).
This is about more than sex shops. According to this Libération article, Niel, the founder of successful service provider Free, has had a sex trade operation (pornographic websites, online sex shops, but also "real life" peep shows), on the side for twenty years, as a source of "easy money". This is something he has always tried to keep secret (in the media, he would only accept questions about his activities as ISP), but his reputation as a "porn king" has barred him from getting positions in other societies.
His associate, Fernand Develter, is also charged for proxenetism: the Strasbourg establishment, the "Sex-Shop X Live Peep-Show", used the dancers as prostitutes. Develter has admitted that he once asked a dancer for fellatio, but he claims that he wanted merely to "verify the rumours"; the dancer, who refused to comply, retorted that this seemed to be quite a common practice for Develter.

The reason Niel did not share those charges is that he never went to that place. Taking the money was all right as long as he could pretend to ignore what was going on.

This case also proves, once again, that the distinction between online and offline sex trade is a diversion, just like the insistence on separating pornography from prostitution.

Edited to add: Free, and now Iliad's most successful product is their DSL box, the "FreeBox". I can't tell you how many times I've heard the joke "yeah, more like 'Free Boxon'" on the radio this week ('boxon' is slang for 'brothel').

[sam]

Thanks so much for sharng this information, Jimmy Ho.

There's a pimp in Portland who owns several strip clubs but purportedly wants to be recognized as a legit businessman for his non-pornstitution concert space promotion business. He has said in interviews that the strip clubs are the cash cow that pays for his investments in non-SOB (sexually oriented business) entertainment.

I read not too long ago about a conservative, religious man from a non-USA country who televised religious media most of the time but played pornography on off hours. He defended it by saying something like, "I have to run pornography to stay competitive." American feminists know this too, as magazines like Bust could not sustain themselves without many, often full page ads for the pornography industries keeping them financially afloat.

[Jimmy H.]

Update: Xavier Niel has been sentenced last Friday. Here is the only item I've found in English, but it is taken (by Singapore's Today Online) from the AFP, so it is basically identical to what I saw in the French media:

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French Net pioneer convicted on sleaze charges

Friday • October 27, 2006

One of France's most high-profile Internet entrepreneurs, Xavier Niel, has been handed a suspended jail sentence for embezzling funds from a sex shop that served as a front for prostitution.

The 39-year-old, who founded the country's second-biggest Internet provider, Free, was also fined 250,000 euros (320,000 dollars) for embezzling money from the Roxane sex shop in the eastern city of Strasbourg.

Niel, who had invested in Roxane and two other sex shops, was accused of pocketing about 5,000 euros per month, in cash, from the establishment over a three-year period.

Now chief executive of Free's parent company Iliad, he was acquitted last year of charges of proxenetism, after the court found insufficient evidence that he knew prostitutes operated on the premises.

One of eight people accused in the case, Niel declined to speak to reporters outside the courtroom on Friday.

"I screwed up, I will be judged and convicted, " he said in a recent interview. — AFP

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Information has been very bad on this case; the name of the sex-shop/peep-show ("Roxane") had been concealed during the trial.