Several high-ranking officers of the French army and one of its main subcontractors for the logistics of external operations (Opex) are to be tried from Monday before the Paris criminal court on suspicion of corruption and favouritism.
Favoritism, passive corruption, violation of professional secrecy and illegal taking of interests, the charges are serious for those involved in this affair. Among them, eight military personnel at the forefront, first and foremost the former chief of staff of the Operations and Transport Support Center (CSOA), Colonel Philippe Rives.
A former commander of the CSOA, General Philippe Boussard, a lieutenant-colonel of the Special Operations Command (COS), Christophe Marie, and the president of the company International Chartering Systems (ICS), Philippe de Jonquières, will also be in the dock. Also in the dock is one of its main subcontractors for the logistics of external operations (Opex). They are to be tried from Monday before the Paris Criminal Court.
Air transport of Opex
They are suspected, to varying degrees, of having participated in the 2010s in an operation which allowed ICS – which appears as a legal entity – to be favored in the award of several logistics contracts, in particular concerning air transport, for French army operations.
The story began in 2016 with a report from the Court of Auditors studying French overseas operations, including their logistics. In the absence of a French solution, between aging Transalls or A400Ms with delayed delivery, the French army regularly resorted to “very large Russian or Ukrainian carriers”, in particular Antonov 124s, “a rare resource on a global level”, as the magistrates of the rue Cambon recalled.
How? Mainly via two external service providers, the NATO support agency Salis and the private logistician ICS, an old companion of the French army, for contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros.
Promise of employment
In addition to doubts about their strategic advantage, the Court of Auditors questioned the additional cost of the services offered by ICS compared to those of Salis. It is not possible to “directly compare” the two, the Ministry of the Armed Forces responded in March 2018.
The Court of Auditors finally reported these facts to the courts, as did the army a little later, leading to an investigation, revealed by the newspaper Le Monde and opened in early 2017 by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). In October of the same year, the gendarmes of the Paris research section searched the CSOA in Vélizy-Villacoublay (Yvelines) and the ICS premises in Paris.
The investigation, which ran to 8,000 pages according to a source close to the case, resulted, according to revelations in 2018 by the Radio France investigation unit, in the discovery of sustained exchanges between several high-ranking officers and ICS managers at key moments in the awarding of contracts. The investigations also uncovered several potential manipulations that would have allowed the company to be better rated in the awarding processes.
Breach of national defence secrets
According to a summary note from the PNF from July 2022, which AFP has seen, Colonel Philippe Rives, for example, is suspected of having written, between February and December 2015, “an internal file favorable to ICS” or transmitted strategic information to the president of the company, Philippe de Jonquières, in exchange for his future hiring as deputy general manager of ICS.
Philippe Broussard is suspected of favouritism, in that he allegedly contributed to ICS being “privileged” in the allocation of missions, “for an estimated minimum additional cost of 16.3 million euros”. In November 2017, after the opening of the criminal investigation, the French army did not renew the contract that linked it to ICS on the freight market for external operations.
In addition to this case, three journalists from Radio France and Disclose who had investigated the affair were heard in December 2022, in a free hearing, by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), for suspicions of breaching national defense secrets. The trial is scheduled to last until September 25.
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