The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed on Thursday March 10 the release of journalist Benoît Collombat and the former director of Calmann-Lévy Editions Florence Sultan, sued for defamation by Vincent Bolloré for a text published in the book “Informer n is not a crime”.
This is the third time that justice has inflicted a setback on the media magnate in this case.
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The incriminated text, written by Benoît Collombat and published in 2015 in a book comprising eleven other texts written by journalists, qualified the strategy of the Bolloré group against the media as a strategy of “drift nets”.
Benoît Collombat evoked there the continuations engaged by the group for passages of a report diffused in March 2009 on France Inter and entitled Cameroon, the black empire of Vincent Bolloré .
These lawsuits led to a conviction of the radio and its journalist in 2010 for defamation.
Seized by the billionaire in a separate procedure against the book, the Paris Criminal Court had, in May 2019, acquitted Benoît Collombat and Florence Sultan, judging that the comments in question were not defamatory.
The judges had also condemned the Bolloré group for "abusive procedure".
Vincent Bolloré had appealed but the court had confirmed the decision of the criminal court.
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His group then lodged an appeal in cassation and, in June 2021, the highest court of the judiciary overturned the decision of the Court of Appeal and ordered a new trial before the Paris Court of Appeal, otherwise composed. .
It was this court which confirmed the decision of May 2019 on Thursday. “There is consistency in the decisions rendered by the court and the Paris Court of Appeal which have ruled three times in the same direction.
It's no coincidence, ”reacted to AFP Me Christophe Bigot, Benoît Collombat's lawyer.
Vincent Bolloré and his group, accustomed to procedures against journalists or the media, have already been convicted of "abusive procedure" in several other cases.
