A judicial investigation for corruption of a foreign public official and concealment targeting Alstom was opened on March 23 after the complaint with civil action filed by the anti-corruption association Anticor, we learned on Tuesday from a judicial source.
The association had filed in December 2020 a complaint for corruption against X with civil action with the dean of the investigating judges of the Paris court, a procedure which leads to the almost systematic opening of a judicial investigation.
In 2014, the leaders of Alstom had agreed to sell the important energy branch of their group to the American industrialist General Electric (GE) for an amount of approximately 12 billion euros.
The same year, in December, the French group had paid a record fine of 772 million dollars in the United States for acts of corruption in several countries.
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These acts of corruption led to
"the weakening of Alstom"
, which
"facilitated the takeover of the energy branch by GE with negative consequences on employment and very positive for the remuneration of the actors of this merger"
, had estimated Anticor in a press release at the time of the complaint.
"These facts, committed by natural persons, are extremely serious since they resulted in the loss of one of the French flagships to the benefit of the Americans"
, told AFP one of Anticor's lawyers. , Me Etienne Tete.
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"As long as the leaders of Alstom have pleaded guilty to acts of corruption in the United States and that the legal person has been condemned, this necessarily means that natural persons have carried out these acts of corruption"
, developed Me Tête.
For the president of the association, Elise Van Beneden, it is important that
"those responsible, both natural and legal persons, be judged before French law"
.
"The sprawling Alstom affair is one of the biggest state scandals that involves issues of industrial, energy and diplomatic sovereignty,"
she said.
To support this complaint, Anticor relied in particular on the 2018 parliamentary report on France's industrial policy, the plea agreement signed by Alstom in the United States and the book written by a former executive of the French group , Frédéric Pierrucci, sentenced in the United States for a corruption case in Indonesia.
The controversial takeover of Alstom by GE is also the subject of a preliminary investigation by the national financial prosecutor's office, after the reporting in 2019 to justice of Olivier Marleix, then president of the parliamentary commission of inquiry.
In addition, the social and economic committee and the GE inter-union in Belfort filed a complaint with the PNF last May, in particular for laundering tax evasion, against the American group.
