The head of the French telecoms group Orange has begun legal action after allegedly receiving death threats for suggesting the company would cease conducting business in Israel.

Stéphane Richard apologised for his comments, made in Egypt earlier this month, and travelled to the Jewish state last week to explain himself in a meeting with Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. He had been accused of bowing to Palestinian pressure to boycott the country.



A lawsuit “against X” (persons unknown) was announced on Tuesday after Richard’s personal details were published on the internet and he received “repeated death threats” and “threatening calls”.

A police spokesperson said: “Stéphane Richard has received death threats on his telephone and his personal details have been put online after the controversy about the presence of Orange in Israel.”

They said he and people close to him had received hundreds of menacing calls.



Grégory Chelli, an Israeli hacker known by his pseudonym Ulcan, who describes himself as a militant Zionist, revealed Richard’s telephone number on his Facebook page. He said: “If you want to say bonjour to the head of Orange …”



Both Richard and Orange representatives have insisted it was never the company’s intention to pull out of Israel and said it was a commercial decision to withdraw from its partnership with the Israeli operator Partner Communications while retaining other operations in the country. They insisted the decision was nothing to do with politics.



In Israel, however, the remarks were interpreted as a call to boycott.



Richard told Netanyahu he deeply regretted the controversy caused by his statements.



He said: “I have been personally and profoundly shaken by the effect caused by the misunderstandings and distortions caused by my recent declarations regarding our operating strategy here. I profoundly regret the impact given the context and intepretation of those statements.



“For me, this meeting is a chance to say, clearly and without ambiguity, that Orange is not taking part in any boycott of Israel or anywhere else.”



Orange is linked by contract to Partner Communications, which has paid to use the Orange name and logo since 1998. The contract is due to last until 2025.



At the end of May, five NGOs and two trades unions lambasted Partner Communications for its activities in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel and demanded that Orange “publicly state its willingness to distance itself and criticise the attacks on human rights committed by Partner”.