The courts have ruled that calls for tender for the transport of soldiers in charge of special operations and their equipment were irregular. A trial opens this Monday, September 9, for eight soldiers and a cargo rental company.
The great mute will have to explain herself in court. Starting this Monday, September 9, a rather exceptional trial will begin before the 32nd correctional chamber of the Paris judicial court. Eight soldiers from the Operations and Transport Support Center (CSOA) and the Special Operations Command are being tried for favoritism, and one of them for corruption. They will have to explain how calls for tenders were awarded between 2011 and 2015 for the transport of soldiers and their equipment to the theater of external operations. What the Ministry of the Armed Forces calls in its jargon “opex”. For the period in question, these are mainly missions in Africa as part of the Barkhane system or in Afghanistan where contingents of French soldiers are present.
The French army does not have suitable aircraft to transport several hundred soldiers and their equipment, such as armoured vehicles, at the same time. It is therefore necessary to charter military cargo planes. The general staff then has two options: use a global contract awarded by NATO for member states or choose its own service provider. The Ministry of the Armed Forces actually chooses both options so as not to depend on a single supplier. A French company, International Chartering Systems (ICS), is therefore chosen to rent the necessary aircraft.
More than 16 million euros of additional costs
It is precisely this choice that marks the beginning of the case now being judged by the criminal court. In 2016, the Court of Auditors prepared a report on the cost of “opex” and then received anonymous letters suggesting that the calls for tenders placed with the ICS company were irregular. It would seem, without this being able to be formally verified, that the unidentified reports came from a dismissed ICS employee. The Court of Auditors then chose to use Article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which requires a civil servant or a State department informed of criminal acts to take legal action.
The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office then opened a preliminary investigation entrusted to the research section of the Paris gendarmes. After a series of searches and police custody, they established that ICS had benefited from strange advantages such as confidential information on chartering markets. In addition, the results of the call for tenders had been crudely modified in red pen in order to make ICS appear to be the best bidder. Worse still, the former chief of staff of the CSOA was to be hired by the service provider ICS, which until now had never recruited a single soldier. The investigation conducted by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office estimates the additional cost paid by the French army at 16.3 million euros given these irregular calls for tenders.
“Incomplete statements”
Release contacted each of the ten defendants: eight military personnel and two ICS executives. Most of them did not respond. Arnaud Claret, the lawyer for the company and its CEO, believes that “The French army did not want to depend solely on NATO for its aircraft charters, hence the choice of the ICS company.” Myriam Mayer, the lawyer for a member of the purchasing department, notes that her client, no more than most of his colleagues “is not guilty of personal enrichment” in this case. There remains the case of the CSOA colonel who was hired by ICS. Normally, this type of recruitment must first be approved by an ethics committee. Questioned by Release, The Ministry of the Armed Forces indicates that the person concerned submitted his file to the ethics committee on the basis of “incomplete statements” […] not corresponding to the reality of its functions”. Which would have allowed him to receive the approval of his ministry.
In 2017, Florence Parly, the Minister of the Armed Forces, learned of the tender affair and terminated the contract with ICS, which was partly recovered by the Bolloré Logistics company. The trial is expected to last two weeks and the defendants risk two years in prison and a fine of 200,000 euros for favoritism. The person prosecuted for corruption faces ten years in prison.
