A Monegasque court has handed down fines to three men after concluding that confidential police data was improperly passed to a private investigator, despite prosecutors ultimately arguing the case should not result in convictions.
The affair dates back to 2020 and began with a family dispute rather than a criminal investigation. A woman living in Monaco, deeply worried about her adult daughter’s wellbeing, believed the young woman had fallen under the influence of an extremist group. Having been estranged from her daughter for several years, she attempted to trace her whereabouts through informal channels before turning to a private investigator.
The investigator, a former French judicial police officer, produced a brief report for his client. Dissatisfied with the work and suspecting irregularities, the mother filed a complaint, claiming she had been misled. What initially appeared to be a civil dispute soon took a more serious turn.
During the ensuing inquiry, Monaco’s Public Security department discovered that the report contained sensitive personal details, including addresses linked to the woman being sought. These details were traced back to internal police databases, access to which is strictly monitored and logged.
Investigators identified three individuals whose credentials had been used in connection with the data. Two were quickly ruled out, as they had no link to the request. The third was a police officer seconded from France as a liaison officer in Monaco at the time. He admitted that he had been contacted by a retired Monegasque police officer, then working in the private sector, who in turn had been approached by the private investigator.
All three men were brought before the Criminal Court on charges relating to the unlawful transmission of personal information. During the hearing, the investigator maintained that he had never explicitly asked anyone to access police systems on his behalf, insisting that he had simply relied on professional contacts. The presiding judge was unconvinced, pointing out that such information could not reasonably have been obtained by chance.
Financial aspects also emerged during the trial. The investigator acknowledged receiving several thousand euros in cash for the assignment, although the court heard that at least one key address mentioned in the file had been sourced elsewhere, not directly from police records.
This nuance proved central to the prosecution’s position. Both the investigating judge and, later, the deputy public prosecutor argued that the legal threshold for the offence may not have been fully met. In his submissions, the prosecutor asked for acquittals, noting that while the situation raised ethical concerns, it was unclear whether privacy laws had been definitively breached in this instance.
Nevertheless, the court took a firmer stance on principle. While acknowledging the absence of malicious intent or financial exploitation on the scale sometimes seen in corruption cases, the judges stressed that the use of police resources for private purposes undermines trust in public institutions.
In its ruling, the court imposed a suspended €1,000 fine on the former officer who accessed the information. The intermediary received a €1,000 fine, while the private investigator was ordered to pay €5,000. Although the penalties were modest, the judgment sends a clear message about the boundaries between public authority and private interests in the Principality.
