Swiss pimp usurping reputation of legendary Tissot boss Francois Thiébaud from France (BaselWorld, SWATCH Group SA)
Sun, 12 Oct 2025
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Conflict of Interest disclaimer: the author has resided in Switzerland, he has taken the Swiss citizenship oath and, from time to time, been party to legal and contractual relationships involving parties referenced in the JuristGate reports. The nature of these relationships is often declared within the research reports although we can't rule out the possibility some relationships or influences have not been explicitly itemized within every report.
Francois Thiébaud was born some time between 1946 and 1947 in France-Compte, a region of the French Jura that borders Switzerland. He completed a law degree at the University of Besancon and an MBA at l'Institut de contrôle de gestion de Paris (a reknowned French business school).
In 1970, Francois Thiébaud started his career in watchmaking in Morteau, France. Morteau is a scenic village in the Jura mountains approximately thirty kilometers from the Swiss border. Many French people who live in these border towns travel to work in Switzerland every day. In French, these cross-border workers are known as Frontalièrs.
The quartz crisis rocked the watchmaking industry in the 1970s. In 1979, Monsieur Thiébaud went to work for Swiss company Breitling. He was responsible for positioning the Breitling brand as a watch for aviators, a marketing theme that remains strong today.
In 1996, Francois Thiébaud was recruited to lead the company Tissot, based in Le Locle, Swiss Jura. In 2000 he became president of the Tissot brand and in 2006 he became a member of the SWATCH Group Executive Management Board.
Under his tenure, Tissot output increased from 800,000 watches per year to over 4 million watches per year.
In 2002, the French-born Thiébaud was appointed president of the organizing committee for BaselWorld, the world-reknowned Swiss watch industry expo.
In 2015, Tissot achieved a major coup when they became timekeeper for America's National Basketball Association, the NBA.
Francois Thiébaud went to America for the contract-signing.
Thiébaud was interviewed by many media organizations, including Forbes. The journalist prefixes his responses with the initials FT.
Swiss business records tell us that in March 2017, in Le Locle, the village everybody knows as the home of Tissot, Francois Thiébaud obtained a business license for a bar and massage parlour trading as El Paraiso at 42 rue Girardet.
To find the record, visit the web site of the Swiss government gazette. For some reason, there are two search boxes on the page. One searches all the records before 2 September 2018 while the other box searches for all records after that date. Type the name of Mr Thiébaud and the name of the place, Francois Thiébaud Locle. Here is a screenshot of the search results:
Clicking the name of El Paraiso returns the business registration certificate from 4 April 2017.
On 10 May 2017 the news website ArcInfo published a report about Francois Thiébaud complaining that the local authority was selling the building out underneath him. The report emphasizes the use of the building for prostitution and they tell us that Mr Thiébaud is from Vevey which is more than two hours away from Le Locle.
In December 2017 Thiébaud canceled the business license for El Paraiso.
In 2018, various news reports appeared telling us that Francois Thiebaud of Vevey had merged his "services business" with the legal practice Parreaux & Associés to form the new business Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners.
The news report about prostitution has a note at the bottom in bold. They mention that on 11 June 2018 they decided to redact the name in the report and replace it with the initials F.T., like the news report from Forbes. They are not talking about the same F.T.
If the journalists at ArcInfo realized Francois Thiébaud from Vevey was usurping the reputation of the French Francois Thiébaud on the board of SWATCH Group, why did the Swiss financial regulator FINMA fail to notice the same phenomena?
When Francois Thiébaud from Vevey pulled out of the massage business to become the partner in a legal fees insurance firm, who was responsible for the probity checks?
At the time, Mathieu Parreaux, the other partner in the legal fees insurance business, was still working as the Greffier, with judge-like powers, in a tribunal in Canton Valais. The snapshot of his biography tells us he had previously worked as a KYC (Know-Your-Client) officer at Safra Sarasin and Audi Bank in Geneva. Given this experience, it looks likely he would know his new business partner, Francois Thiébaud from Vevey had previously run a massage parlour usurping the reputation of another prominent businessman. If Parreaux knew all of that and if Francois Thiébaud from Vevey had no prior experience in the legal or insurance industries then we can contemplate the possibility that Mathieu Parreaux only chose this other man as a business partner to continue the tradition of usurping the reputation of the real Francois Thiébaud from France, the world-reknowned president of Tissot.
Even when Parreaux seemed to know FINMA was about to shut him down in 2023, a new business entity, Justiva SA was created with Francois Thiébaud from Vevey as the company director. They seemed to know that the name Thiébaud was good as gold.
Whenever you open a new bank account, purchase an insurance policy or take out a loan, the firm asks you to provide all kinds of sensitive documents about your identity and financial history. Behind the scenes, KYC officers like Mathieu Parreaux have access to all those documents and huge databases about all of us. Wouldn't it be creepy if these men were using that data to usurp our identities for their own purposes?
I can't help remembering the ongoing saga of Matthias Kirschner using the name FSFE to usurp the reputation of the real Dr Richard Stallman and real FSF in Boston.
By using Francois Thiébaud from Vevey to usurp the reputation of Francois Thiébaud from France, the world-reknowned president of Tissot, the Swiss jurists are doing something that smells like identity theft.
In fact, because Francois Thiébaud, president of Tissot is really from France, he will always be a Frontalier. He may be one of the most successful Frontaliers in Switzerland. The Swiss jurists have used the reputation of the most successful Frontalier in Switzerland to deceive other Frontaliers to purchase a worthless insurance. Moreover, they even deceived a French woman to quit her job in a real insurance company to come and work for the illegal legal fees insurance in Geneva.
They tricked all those Frontaliers by using the name of Francois Thiébaud, a French man, the most successful Frontalier.
In 2019, the Swatch group chose not to participate in BaselWorld, the world's largest watch fair, despite the fact Thiébaud had been president of the BaselWorld committee for 20 years. Was he afraid to go out in public after the other Francois Thiébaud from Vevey had started sullying his reputation?
Francois Thiébaud of Tissot and BaselWorld is not the same Francois Thiébaud who decided to run a massage parlour in Le Locle. It is a long drive from Vevey to Le Locle. If you were starting your first business, why would you do so in a location so far from your home?
Another news report appears about the prostitution in 2021. The title tells us that Le Locle is no longer the capital of love for hire (Prostitution: Le Locle n’est plus la capitale des amours tarifées).
Francois Thiébaud is a French citizen. He grew up very close to the border with Switzerland and dedicated his entire life and career to the watch industry.
Francois Thiébaud of Vevey is a Swiss citizen. He is a totally different person. It is important to think about why he chose to operate that type of business and why he chose to do so in Le Locle. Was he hoping that anybody searching for his name in Google would be confused by all the news reports about Francois Thiébaud at Tissot? In other words, a Swiss Thiébaud obtaining obscurity for himself by operating in the shadow of the French Thiébaud, a French man who appears to be superior to the Swiss man in every way?
Can somebody use their own name for identity theft? It is a complicated subject.
The Swiss Thiébaud decided to move from prostitution into the legal insurance services industry. These are industries that pretend to practice the highest standards of integrity.
Comparing the business experience and qualifications of Mathieu Parreaux and Francois Thiébaud, we can see that Parreaux had graduated with a law degree and he had worked in a number of legal and banking jobs. At the time when Parreaux and Thiébaud decided to join forces, Parreaux was the greffier for a tribunal in Monthey.
Did Parreaux enter into the partnership with the more junior Thiébaud for any reason other than to usurp the name and reputation of the French Thiébaud on the board of SWATCH Group?
More significantly, in early 2023, as FINMA progressed unacceptably slowly in their investigation of Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners, we can see the partners created a new business entity using only Mr Thiébaud. When FINMA shut down Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners, Justicia SA in April 2023, the shelf company under Mr Thiébaud was renamed to Justiva SA and began trying to recruit the former clients of the shuttered enterprise.
Why did FINMA only issue a ban against one partner, Monsieur Parreaux and not both of them? Was FINMA afraid to create a ban order with the name Francois Thiébaud in it because it is the same name as Monsieur Thiébaud at Tissot? Or did FINMA decide not to ban the Swiss Thiébaud because they knew he wasn't really in charge, he was only there for his name?
The new entity Justiva SA continued operating for another eight or nine months. How could FINMA completely fail to notice it was there? Was FINMA fooled by the name of Francois Thiébaud as a director?
Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners deceived Frontalièrs with promises of legal protection that they failed to fulfil. In the one case Arnaud Parreaux took to the federal court, he argued against minimum wages for cross-border workers.
Just as Swiss jurists exploited the French woman, it appears that Mathieu Parreaux has exploited Francois Thiébaud of Vevey as a puppet to exploit the reputation of the much larger-than-life Monsieur Thiébaud at Tissot & SWATCH Group. █
Conflict of Interest disclaimer: the author has resided in Switzerland, he has taken the Swiss citizenship oath and, from time to time, been party to legal and contractual relationships involving parties referenced in the JuristGate reports. The nature of these relationships is often declared within the research reports although we can't rule out the possibility some relationships or influences have not been explicitly itemized within every report.