The Paris Court of Appeal estimated Friday that Bernard Tapie's debt in the arbitration case, the exact calculation of which has been the subject of a fierce legal battle for 4 years, amounted to 438 million euros, according to the judgment consulted by AFP.
Read also: Tapie Arbitration: the great story of a sprawling affair
This quantification is a victory for the creditors of the businessman, because it largely corresponds to the sums awarded in 2008 to Bernard Tapie by an arbitration - supposed to settle his dispute with Crédit-Lyonnais in the resale case. Adidas in 1993 - that justice ordered him to reimburse by adding interest. After the cancellation of this private sentence in 2015, the companies of the businessman, who is fighting at 77 against metastasized cancer, are threatened with default.
The public prosecutor's office seeks judicial liquidation
" The court did not respond to the arguments developed by the companies " of Bernard Tapie, " and the question must therefore be submitted to the Court of Cassation ", reacted to AFP Me François Kopf, lawyer for the businessman who disputes his entire debt. On the eve of his order to reimburse, in December 2015, the former boss of Olympique de Marseille, himself in personal liquidation since the 1990s, had placed his companies, which hold all of his property, under the protection of the bankruptcy law.
But the former minister believes he will have nothing to repay until the amount of his debt has not been finally settled by justice. In November 2017, a commissioner judge of the Paris Commercial Court had rendered a decision bringing the receivable due by the Consortium de Réalisation (CDR), the entity responsible for the legacy of Crédit Lyonnais, to 322 million euros. It was this decision that the Court of Appeal overturned Friday, almost five months after the hearing on October 1, 2019. Beyond determining how much Bernard Tapie owes, there is also the question of how he will reimburse.
Commercial justice has therefore been examining for four years the repayment schedules proposed by the companies GBT (Groupe Bernard Tapie), majority shareholder of the media group La Provence, and FIBT (Financière et Immobilière Bernard Tapie), which owns its Parisian mansion and his villa in Saint-Tropez. After the rejection of the first two reimbursement plans and the placement of these companies in receivership in early 2019, a third plan is now being examined at the Bobigny Commercial Court. Debates on its viability resume on March 4, before a possible decision in several weeks. The prosecution and the CDR are demanding judicial liquidation and the immediate seizure of property.
