in March after being diagnosed with secondary breast cancer.

The scandal saw one of France's leading antiques experts, Georges "Bill" Pallot, and award-winning cabinetmaker, Bruno Desnoues, put on trial on charges of fraud and money laundering following a nine-year investigation.Galerie Kraemer and its director, Laurent Kraemer, were also accused of deception by gross negligence for selling on some of the chairs – something they both deny.

All three defendants are set to appear at a court in Pontoise, near Paris on Wednesday following a trial in March. Mr Pallot and Mr Desnoues have admitted to their crimes, while Mr Kraemer and his gallery dispute the charge of deception by gross negligence.Considered the top scholar on French 18th-Century chairs, having written the authoritative book on the subject, Mr Pallot was often called upon by Versailles, among others, to give his expert opinion on whether historical items were the real deal. He was even called as an expert witness in French courts when there were doubts about an item's authenticity.His accomplice, Mr Desnoues, was a decorated cabinetmaker and sculptor who had won a number of prestigious awards, including best sculptor in France in 1984, and had been employed as the main restorer of furniture at Versailles.

Speaking in court in March, Mr Pallot said the scheme started as a "joke" with Mr Desnoues in 2007 to see if they could replicate an armchair they were already working on restoring, belonging to Madame du Barry.Masters of their crafts, they managed the feat, convincing other experts that it was a chair from the period.

And buoyed by their success, they started making more.

Describing how they went about constructing the chairs, the two described in court how Mr Pallot sourced wood frames at various auctions for low prices, while Mr Desnoues aged wood at his workshop to make others.First, the report said that "an operational plan was agreed that there would be no disclosure that X was an MI5 CHIS". This was the opposite of the truth. MI5's entire operational plan involved a sustained attempt to persuade me to stop doing a story by disclosing that X was an agent.

Second, the report said "it was not MI5 policy to record all such exchanges" with journalists. This was untrue. There was a policy requiring such exchanges to be recorded.Third, the report referenced a High Court witness statement I had given and said: "De Simone's witness statement confirms that no disclosure of X's status as a CHIS was made." This was false. My witness statement said no such thing.

When contacted by the BBC, IPCO said it was "misled into amending our draft report to remove the finding that Agent X's status had been disclosed."IPCO said the first two falsehoods were included due to "assurances provided by MI5" and that it is now "clear that this information was incorrect and that the findings in our draft report reflected the true position".