Magali Berdah in court in Paris, May 10, 2023 (AFP / Bertrand GUAY)
The prosecution requested 18 months in prison, six of which were held under an electronic bracelet, against Magali Berdah, the former “popess of influencers”, tried on Monday in Nice for bankruptcy when she was an insurance broker around ten years ago.
The case concerns the brokerage company BA&CO, created in 2013 by a childhood friend of Ms. Berdah, taken over in March 2014 by the mother of this figure in the world of social networks, then placed in compulsory liquidation in 2015, with liabilities estimated at nearly 2.5 million euros.
If Ms. Berdah presented herself as a simple employee in charge of sales within BA&CO, the prosecution considered that she was the de facto manager.
“She appears to be the central character of this company. She defends herself but all the evidence converges,” insisted the prosecutor, Sylvie Maillard, also requesting a definitive ban on managing a company.
Prosecuted alongside her, Ms. Berdah’s childhood friend refused to answer questions while her mother, absent from the hearing for health reasons, gave only vague answers during the investigation. The prosecution requested a suspended prison sentence against them.
Between 2014 and 2015, the very vague accounting of BA&CO indicates more than 80,000 euros taken in cash without justification, while 600,000 euros passed through an account opened in the name of a secretary to pay salaries when the company’s assets were at risk of being damaged. be frozen at the request of creditors.
– Luxury spending –
But this account also presents luxury expenses (hotels in Monaco, clothes, chocolates, etc.) totaling 27,000 euros that no one has explained.
Very combative in front of the judges, Ms. Berdah nevertheless recognized a certain permeability between her personal finances and the secretary’s account: she received payments for her work and she also topped up the account with funds that had been loaned to her in 2015 .
In 2019, she was also convicted of abuse of weakness for having borrowed these funds from a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, even though she claims to have repaid everything, including interest. A case which pushed investigators to recently take an interest in BA&CO.
“Overnight, we woke up saying that it was Magali Berdah who had done everything,” denounced the influencer.
All the defense lawyers pleaded for acquittal, with Ms. Berdah’s lawyers criticizing a late and, according to them, inconclusive investigation. “This file smells like an attic,” scoffed Me Franck De Vita. “If there is no Magali Berdah, there are no prosecutions and there is no trial (…) We must have her, and she is the only one who is solvent,” he said.
Ms. Berdah insisted on the twenty companies that she managed in her name during her life: they were all liquidated “properly” according to her – with 350,000 euros in liabilities, however, the prosecutor recalled -, while that the Shauna Events agency, created in 2017 and specialized in connecting brands and influencers, made its fortune.
However, she experienced a “descent into hell” in 2022, when rapper Booba began to accuse her of deceptive commercial practices. The investigation against her was dismissed, while Booba was indicted for aggravated online moral harassment and 28 Internet users were convicted in March.
The judgment was reserved until November 25.
