PARIS — The French government said on Thursday that it would seek to bolster industrial secrecy rules after the automaker Renault suspended three executives, including a member of its management committee, who are suspected of compromising the electric car technology on which the company is betting its future.
“There’s a broad danger for French industry,” the industry minister, Éric Besson, said during an interview with RTL radio. The phrase “economic war” is appropriate in this case, he added.
Mr. Besson said the affair appeared to be “serious, and again highlights the risks that our companies face from industrial spying.”
While few details about the case have been made public, the investigation appeared to focus on possible efforts to obtain Renault’s electric car technology.
Mr. Besson declined to elaborate, except to say that the government would be working with French companies to help protect their industrial secrets.
A spokeswoman for Renault, Frédérique Le Grèves, said she could not comment in detail because an internal review was under way. She did, however, confirm that three employees were suspended Monday after an internal investigation that began in August turned up apparent violations of Renault’s ethics policy.
“What they did was very severe,” Ms. Le Grèves said, adding: “It wasn’t just a case of them giving pictures to the media, for instance.”
Christian Husson, Renault’s general counsel and compliance officer, said all of the suspended employees had “extremely strategic positions” at the company.
Mr. Husson also said in a statement that the company had found a “body of converging evidence demonstrating that three group employees have committed misconduct that infringes Renault’s ethics, consciously and deliberately endangering the company’s assets.”
He said the case would “inevitably result in legal action.”
The company said it could not identify the employees while an investigation was under way. But a person with knowledge of the situation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that one employee involved was Michel Balthazard, senior vice president for advanced engineering and a member of the management committee, which is run by Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive.
The company declined to make Mr. Balthazard available. Mr. Balthazard, who has also been widely identified in the news media, could not be reached for comment via his work e-mail or through a phone directory search in the Paris region.
Neither Renault nor the office of Mr. Besson, the industry minister, would say whether the executives were caught actually passing information or whether an industrial rival or foreign country was suspected. But one country likely to receive scrutiny is China.
The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which is appointed by Congress, said in a report in 2009 that Beijing had been “a major beneficiary of technology acquired through industrial espionage.” China has denied in the past that its intelligence agencies were engaged in stealing commercial secrets.
Renault is the second-largest automaker in France, after PSA Peugeot Citroën. Renault and its Japanese partner, Nissan Motor, are betting heavily on electric car technology for growth. The technology is made more attractive by the tax incentives many countries offer for purchases of electric vehicles.
