When Sylvie Delezenne, a marketing expert from Lille, was job-hunting in 2015, she was delighted to be contacted on LinkedIn by a human resources manager at the French culture ministry, inviting her to Paris for an interview.

“It was my dream to work at the culture ministry,” she said.

But instead of finding a job, Delezenne, 45, is now one of more than 240 women at the centre of a criminal investigation into the alleged drugging of women without their knowledge in a place they never expected to be targeted: a job interview.

An investigating judge is examining allegations that, over a nine-year period, dozens of women interviewed for jobs by a senior civil servant, Christian Nègre, were offered coffees or teas by him that had been mixed with a powerful and illegal diuretic, which he kne

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