Benoît Puga

Benoît Puga  link (Officer)
File:Benoît Puga.png
Born	January 30 1953 France
Nationality	France
Religion	Catholic
Criminal charge	corruption
Parents	Hubert Puga
French officer who was Chief of the General Staff from 2010 until 2016. Attended the 2017 Bilderberg meeting.

Benoît Puga is a French five-star general who was Chief of the General Staff from 2010 until 2016.He attended the 2017 Bilderberg meeting.

Background

Benoît Puga is one of the sons of Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert Puga, also an officer, who had participated in the failed French Algeria putsch in 1961, which earned him a five-year suspended prison sentence, as well as an exclusion from the army.

Benoît Puga is a member of a family of seven children. One of his brothers, Father Denis Puga, is a member of the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of Saint-Pius-X and vicar of the parish of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, in Paris, of which Benoît Puga is himself one of the faithful.

Benoît Puga and his wife, Isabelle Puga, have eleven children together (including only one soldier, a naval aviation pilot). As of January 2022, they have 43 grandchildren.

Career

Puga joined the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr in September 1973, at the age of 20, following which he joined the Infantry Application School in 1975. From August to October 1976, he conducted a tour at the corps of a reconnaissance helicopter unit belonging to the VIIth U.S. Army Corps stationed at Nuremberg in Germany. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 1 August 1976.

On 1 April 1978, Puga was assigned to the 2^nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, where he was, in succession, section chief, assistant officer, and commander of a company in a unit combat capacity. Accordingly, he was promoted to the rank of captain. He participated in several operations and exterior deployment: at Kolwez in Zaire in 1978, at Gabon in 1979, at Djibouti in 1980 and 1981, at Beirut in 1982, at Bangui in Central African Republic in 1983 and Tchad in 1984.

In August 1992, Puga rejoined the general staff headquarters at Paris at the corps of the study bureau and participated in the reorganization of the operational command of the armed forces. In 1994 he was assigned to Bosnia as military assistant to General Bertrand de La Presle and then as military adviser to High Commissioner for Bosnia Carl Bildt.

On 9 August 1996, Puga received the regimental colors of the 2^nd Foreign Parachute Regiment and participated at the head of that regiment to operations in Congo Brazzaville in 1996, the Central African Republic, then at Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo in 1997.

In 1998 he became a professor at the Defence College, again military adviser to Carl Bildt, auditor of the Institute for Advanced Studies of National Defence and the Centre for Advanced Military Studies. In 2004 he was appointed Commander General of Special Operations (GCOS). In 2007, he became deputy chief of operations of the Armed Forces staff. At the meeting of the Council of Ministers on July 2, 2008, he was appointed director of the military secret service and took office on September 1, 2008. On March 5, 2010, he was appointed Chief of Staff to President Nicolas Sarkozy. He succeeded Admiral Edouard Guillaud who had been appointed Chief of the Defence Staff. President François Hollande confirmed him twice.

By decree of August 23, 2016, he was appointed grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor.

Corruption invstigation

Puga was targeted in 2024 by an investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office for corruption, influence peddling and illegal taking of interests: he is suspected of having compromised with Senator Jean-Pierre Bansard, described as "extremely rich ". The latter benefited from numerous decorations for his relatives when Benoît Puga headed the Legion of Honor. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, who is also the grand master of the Legion of Honor, put an end to General Puga's duties, without however taking legal action.