the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office requires a trial for Vincent Bolloré

The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) has requested that businessman Vincent Bolloré be put on trial for corruption in the investigation into the fraudulent attribution of the management of the ports of Lomé in Togo and Conakry in Guinea between 2009 and 2011 , Agence France-Presse learned from a Source close to the matter, Friday June 7. Seized since 2013, Parisian financial judges suspect the Bolloré group of having used the political consulting activities of its subsidiary Euro RSCG (now Havas) to fraudulently obtain management of the ports of Lomé and Conakry for the benefit of another of its subsidiaries , Bolloré Africa Logistics, formerly called SDV, at the time of the presidential elections in 2010 in these countries.

To avoid a long criminal trial, the eleventh largest fortune in France as well as Gilles Alix, general director of the Bolloré group at the time, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, international director at Havas, had requested an appearance in 2021 on prior admission of guilt ( CRPC). During the public hearing, they admitted the facts and accepted a fine of 375,000 euros, but the court refused to approve it, sending the case back for investigation.

The Breton industrialist, 72 years old, had contested this procedural setback until the cassation, which according to him had caused an attack on his presumption of innocence, but the highest judicial court validated the procedure at the end of November 2023, paving the way for a new criminal trial. Monday, according to the Source close to the case, the PNF requested a trial for active corruption of a foreign public official against MM. Bolloré and Alix, for breach of trust for the latter, and for complicity in active corruption for MM. Bolloré and Dorent.

Bolloré’s lawyers will request the dismissal of the case

“I welcome the referral request” in this “heavy case that has been going on since 2013 (…) in which the president of Togo is particularly wet” Faure Gnassingbé, indicated M^e Alexis Ihou, lawyer for the late Agbéyomé Kodjo and Brigitte Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson, unsuccessful candidates for the 2010 presidential election in Togo.

“A request for dismissal will be presented to the investigating judge”for their part reported masters Céline Astolfe and Olivier Baratelli, who defend Vincent Bolloré and the Bolloré group, “the facts being contested from day one in a legally empty file”. THE “misstep” of the non-validation of the CRPC in 2021 “definitively deprives the parties of the right to be judged in an impartial and objective manner”according to these tips.

The final decision on whether to hold a trial rests with financial investigating judge Serge Tournaire. The Bolloré group had benefited from a public interest judicial agreement (CJIP), allowing it to obtain the abandonment of proceedings in exchange for the payment of a fine of 12 million euros.