Trial Prosecuting Murderous Freemason Criminal Network Begins In France

The vast criminal conspiracy implicates France's foreign intelligence agency as being guided by the invisible hand of Freemasonry.

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Freemasonry has long been seen as the invisible hand guiding the course of human history. While that history is replete with examples of Freemasons configuring the architecture of society, the inner machinations of its influence have largely been shrouded in secrecy. Although Freemasonry and other secret societies have remained adept at shielding the public from having a perspective on the immense influence they wield, seminal moments throughout history have been able to cast some light through the shadows they hide behind. From the publication of John Robison’s monumental 1797 anti-Masonic polemic Proofs of a Conspiracy to the Morgan Affair, which saw the Anti-Masonic Party become the first third party to be elected to U.S. Congress, to the Taxil “Hoax,” which revealed the perverse occult philosophies at the root of Freemasonry, to iconoclastic American journalist Alex Jones sneaking into Bohemian Grove and capturing its Cremation of Care ritual on video, the thread that has sewn the veil of secrecy those esoteric orders hide behind has incrementally unraveled more and more with each subsequent revelation.

The latest episode revealing the extent of the power and influence that secret societies still hold has begun to unfold in France, following the start of a trial exposing a network operating out of a Freemason lodge just outside of Paris that served as the epicenter of a vast criminal conspiracy reaching some of the highest echelons of the French government, from its police forces to its intelligence agencies.

Twenty-two defendants allegedly involved in a criminal conspiracy based out of the Athanor Freemason Lodge located in the Paris suburb of Puteaux face charges ranging from criminal conspiracy to murder. Of those 22 defendants whose ages span from 30 to 72 years old, four of them are Freemasons initiated into the lodge. The defendants include four former officers within France’s Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (“DGSE”) foreign intelligence service, a retired domestic intelligence agent, three police officers, six business executives, a security guard, a doctor, and an engineer.

The lodge, which was dissolved in 2021 after the crimes of its members came to light, was previously organized under the Grande Loge de l’Alliance Maçonnique Française (“GLAMF”). That Masonic body governing the Athanore Lodge, which drew its name from the alchemical furnace designed to transmute base metals to gold, characterized the crimes as being a “total contradiction with the values of Freemasonry.” The GLAMF further tried to distance itself from the criminal syndicate by alleging that the Athanor Lodge had become taken over by bad actors whose motivations were not rooted in Masonic principles. Despite those protestations, the case brought to French prosecutors shows how their standing as high ranking Freemasons was integral for them to be able to orchestrate their criminal network.

French prosecutors allege that known Freemasons Jean-Luc Bagur, Frédéric Vaglio, and Daniel Beaulieu were the ringleaders of the criminal syndicate. Sébastien Leroy, another defendant in the case closely connected to Beaulieu, though not an initiated Freemason himself, is accused of carrying out murders ordered by his Masonic overlords either himself or through a network of hitmen he directed. All four are among the 13 of 22 defendants facing life imprisonment if convicted.

The case against the Athanor Freemason Lodge criminal network arose following the failed contract killing of 54-year-old French business coach Marie-Helene Dini in July 2020. The murder plot was foiled after Pierre Bourdin, 28, and Carl Esnault, 25, two members of the French DGSE intelligence agency—France’s equivalent to the CIA and MI6—were arrested on weapons charges.

The two men were observed to be waiting outside of Dini’s home in the Parisian suburb of Créteil early one summer morning. Despite being part of France’s most prestigious spy agency, neither of the men appeared to operate with any semblance of clandestinity. As the two men sat in a black Renault Clio, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to commit the assassination, they were observed wearing dark clothing, including gloves and a green ski mask. The apparel unbefitting of the sweltering summer weather immediately blew their cover. As they waited for Dini to leave her residence, a neighbor of hers noticed the men in the vehicle and called the police after the ominous appearance of their outfits triggered their suspicion. Police surrounded the car minutes after the neighbor alerted the authorities. When the officers questioned Esnault and Bourdin, the men responded by telling them they were secret agents operating under the code names “Adélard” and “Dagomar.” The hitmen explained they were assigned to a mission to assassinate Dini, who they were told was a Mossad agent operating within France.

After the stunning admission of their crime, Esnault and Bourdin were arrested. Authorities uncovered a loaded Browning pistol along with 9mm rounds, a silencer, and numerous other weapons in the vehicle. Investigators also uncovered a tracking device placed on Dini’s vehicle by the hitmen. Dini’s home was subsequently searched, with police seizing her computers and taking her into custody for hours to face rigorous questioning regarding any potential links she had to the Israeli Mossad. “This is absurd. I have never set foot in Israel,” she told the police.

Officers questioning Esnault and Bourdin uncovered that they had been paid €70,000 to murder Dini. The impetus of the murder plot soon led police to the epicenter of the criminal syndicate operating out of the Freemason Lodge. The motive behind the murder linked the men to Jean-Luc Bagur, the Venerable Master of the Athanor Lodge and a rival of Dini’s in the industry of business coaching. Dini had been working to create a professional association of corporate coaching agencies that excluded Bagur, which he deemed a serious threat to the viability of his business. Bagur and Dini had met several times in 2019 to discuss building the professional network. Over the course of their conversations, it became apparent the two were at odds with each other’s vision. “I knew that we didn’t agree. I wouldn’t say he was someone particularly warm and friendly, but at no time could I have imagined that things would go to this length,” Dini stated after Bagur’s role in organizing the foiled murder plot was revealed to her.

Determined to eliminate Dini as a business rival, Bagur appealed to his fellow Freemason Frédéric Vaglio, whom he knew through the Athanor Lodge, to plot her murder. In turn, Vaglio brought Freemason associate Daniel Beaulieu into the fold due to his connections as a retired domestic intelligence officer in France. Beaulieu then employed a network of hitmen he was connected to through his association with Sébastien Leroy. Bourdin and Esnault, who each worked as guards at a DGSE military base with the unfulfilled ambition of becoming field operatives for the foreign intelligence agency, were contacted by Leroy and jumped at the opportunity to take part in what they saw as a real mission. Bourdin conveyed this account of how the events leading to his arrest unfolded when he told French investigators that he was tired of staring at surveillance screens at the military base all day, longing for the opportunity to live out the spy fantasies that led him to join the DGSE after his time in the French military as a parachutist.

The revelation of Leroy’s involvement in the plot to murder Dini, which uncovered the criminal network led by Freemasons operating out of the Athanor Lodge, exposed the wider scope of its crimes. The vast array of those crimes included robberies, assaults, and at least one other murder Leroy was involved in orchestrating. Leroy told authorities that he carried out the 2018 murder of French racing driver Laurent Pasquali.

Following his disappearance in the fall of 2018, friends of Pasquali told investigators that they believed he had been in serious financial trouble. His disappearance remained unsolved for nearly a year until September 2019, when a hiker found the remains of a human skeleton in a forest near the commune of Cistrières in southeast central France. DNA analysis performed thereafter confirmed that the skeletal remains were of Pasquali. However, French police remained unable to link his murder to the Athanor Lodge Freemason criminal network until the arrest of Leroy following the botched assassination of Marie-Helene Dini. Prosecutors now believe that Pasquali was murdered over a debt he owed to an associate of Vaglio.

Like Bourdin and Esnault, Leroy believed he was being tasked with murders for hire under the auspices of the French government because of the directives given to him by Beaulieu, who retired after a career serving in the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (“DGSI”), the French equivalent of the FBI. During questioning, Leroy, who left the French military to become a private security guard, told investigators that he had been manipulated into committing the crimes by Beaulieu, who he said offered him the opportunity to become a confidential informant for the DGSI.

Beaulieu’s career in French intelligence factors into the motives behind dozens of other cases examined in the investigation into the Freemason criminal network he was one of the ringleaders of. Other examples of crimes believed to be perpetrated under the directives of Freemasons from the Athanor Lodge include death threats made against Sylvain Berrios, a former member of the French National Assembly and Mayor of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés from 2014 to 2024. Berrios was first elected mayor when he defeated incumbent Henri Plagnol. The chief of staff of Plagnol’s unsuccessful re-election campaign was an associate of Vaglio who came under fire during the election cycle. The investigation into the Athanor Lodge criminal syndicate revealed that Vaglio approached Beaulieu, asking him, “Could Berrios have an accident?” His fellow Freemason indicated that could be arranged, with the outcome ranging from leaving Berrios anywhere from in a “wheelchair to a coffin.” While the pair abandoned any attack on Berrios directly due to concerns over the security apparatus he was insulated by, it is assumed that they orchestrated the assault of Jean-François Le Helloco, a local councilman and close political ally of Berrios. Helloco was beaten in his home garden by two masked men in October 2016.

Targeting local French politicians is only a small segment of the politically motivated crimes the network is suspected to have plotted. French authorities who led the investigation into the network also uncovered plans to neutralize a political opponent in the Congo, targeting Salafist mosques throughout France, and a plan to extort a Russian billionaire in Monaco. While none of these plans came to fruition, Leroy indicated that the network was involved in as many as 10 to 20 different murders. One murder Leroy implicated the Freemason criminal syndicate in surrounds the death of Du Wei, the Chinese Ambassador to Israel who was found dead in his apartment in Herzliya, a city named after Zionist patriarch Theodor Herzl 23 miles north of Tel Aviv, in May 2020.

Du was named ambassador in February 2020 after previously serving as a Chinese envoy to Ukraine. Israeli police launched an investigation into the death of Du but concluded there was no foul play. Israeli health officials determined that he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. While China initially announced it would launch an internal investigation into his death, it abandoned that plan and the Chinese Foreign Ministry eventually agreed with Israeli officials that Du died of natural causes. The implication that the death of the Chinese ambassador was tied to the Athanor Lodge Freemason criminal network by Leroy is the first major development in the aftermath of his death that suggests a political motive may have been what was behind his untimely demise. However, French authorities have yet to determine the veracity of Leroy’s claim.

Corroborating the veracity of Leroy’s claims of the total number of murders committed by the Freemason network and the full scope of their crimes has been further complicated by an alleged “suicide attempt” by Beaulieu. After a series of interviews, Beaulieu reportedly attempted to kill himself while in police custody. According to his attorney, the suicide attempt has left him with “impaired concentration,” conveniently compromising his potential to cooperate with prosecutors and actively participate in the trial. A verdict in the case is expected to be determined in July.

The trial of the defendants implicated in the Athanor Lodge criminal network is the latest major development revealing the extent of Freemasonry’s influence on European politics and society. In December 2025, the London Metropolitan Police (“Met”) instituted a new rule that required officers to declare any links to groups, including secret societies like Freemasonry, to combat concerns that such ties could be linked to corruption. The police force added Freemasonry to its list of “declarable associations,” requiring both existing employees and applicants to disclose any active or previous memberships. Although a survey of officers and staff of the police department revealed that two-thirds of respondents backed the new policy, it was met with resistance from Freemason rites across England.

The United Grand Lodge of England (“UGLE”) followed the ruling by sending the Met a letter indicating its intention to seek a legal injunction against the new policy on the basis that it was “unlawful, unfair, and discriminatory.” Met Commander Simon Messinger clarified that the new rule did not prohibit employees of the force from joining Freemason Lodges, stating, “Our decision does not mean any member of staff cannot join the Freemasons or another similar organization.” Rather than being barred from being initiated into Freemasonry, the policy simply required employees of the police department to transparently declare their status within its ranks.

Clarifications on the Met’s new policy were not enough to assuage the concerns felt by English Freemasons. Adrian Marsh, UGLE grand secretary, stated, “Given the obvious, detrimental impact on our members, United Grand Lodge of England, Order of Women Freemasons and Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons consider that we now have no choice but to take legal action to challenge this unlawful decision.” Soon after the new policy became enacted, Freemasons sought an emergency injunction against it on the basis it was tantamount to religious discrimination and a violation of human rights and privacy laws. The request for an injunction was filed on Christmas Eve in the United Kingdom High Court of Justice, alleging that Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley was promoting “conspiracy theories” about the influence of Freemasons by implementing the new policy.

In an outcome that ironically supported the claims by Freemasons that they do not control the upper echelons of government, their legal challenge against the Met policy failed. In February 2026, Justice Chamberlain of the High Court of Justice issued a 17-page ruling determining that the Met policy “serves a legitimate aim, maintaining and enhancing public trust in policing, and is proportionate,” siding against the Freemasons’ attempt to strike the policy down. Following the failed legal challenge, 316 Met police officers and staff members declared their association with Freemasonry.

The crimes committed by the criminal syndicate operating out of the Athanor Freemason Lodge enabled by the political influence of its members demonstrate the need for increased transparency on how members of secret societies like Freemasons operate within the public sphere. Not only does the policy of the London Metropolitan Police Department illustrate that need, but it reveals the extent to which members of organizations like Freemasonry are part of the social fabric ruling society. While Masonic influence has long been trivialized as a conspiracy theory, each of those examples illustrates the immense power it wields and the danger it presents if not confronted, proving the assertion by President John F. Kennedy that “the very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society.”