The Markovic affair
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The Markovic affair was a political scandal in France in the late 1960s.
On October 1, 1968, in the village of Élancourt, Yvelines on the western outskirts of Paris, the dead body of Stevan Markovic, bodyguard of Alain Delon, was found in a public dump. The private correspondence of Markovic seemed to implicate Alain and Nathalie Delon and a Corsican gangster, François Marcantoni.
The investigation focussed on Delon and Marcantoni. Then it was thrown into disarray by an anonymous letter in Le Figaro implicating senior officials and former members of the government in sleazy parties organized by Marcantoni. Apparently a Yugoslavian named Borivoj Ackov would reveal more.
Paris was alive with rumours about the Markovic affair and the stories grew wilder, it was even suggested that compromising photographs existed showing the wife of the former French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou (later President).
Georges Pompidou was convinced his arch-enemies Louis Wallon and Henri Capitant were involved and that they had used the French espionage service SDECE (later the DGSE) in a plot aimed at him, in particular the famous service #6.
After becoming President of the Republic, Pompidou named Alexandre de Marenches as the head of the SDECE in order to reform it. Assisted by Michel Roussin, his principal private secretary, de Marenches expelled unruly “secret agents”, such as Jean-Charles Marchiani.
