Business is piling up for Bernard Laporte.
Less than eight months before the World Cup organized in France, French rugby is shaken by business.
Bernard Laporte, the president of the French Rugby Federation, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence on December 13 for having entered into a
"corruption pact"
with the businessman and president of the Montpellier club Mohed Altrad.
Having appealed the decision, his sentence, together with the ban on exercising his activity as president of the FFR, is not immediately enforceable.
According to information from
L'Équipe
, the French leader was placed in police custody on Tuesday, in a separate case, for laundering aggravated tax evasion, like two other people.
Once again, it was the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) which launched this case, after opening a preliminary investigation in August 2020. The Financial Judicial Investigation Service (SEJF) is in charge of this new case, adds sports daily.
68% of French people want him to leave
His conviction by the Paris Criminal Court not being enforceable, the former coach of the Blues (2000-2007) refused to resign as such but accepted, under joint pressure from the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, of the National Rugby League (LNR) and the FFR's ethics committee, to step back behind a delegate president (Patrick Buisson, vice-president in charge of amateur rugby) until the appeal trial, which should not intervene only after the 2023 World Cup. The referendum among French clubs to appoint Patrick Buisson as deputy president began on Monday and ends on Thursday.
Read alsoFrench Rugby Federation: “Laporte in withdrawal, that does not mean the end of his policy”
A survey carried out in mid-January by Odoxa for Winamax and RTL - among 1,005 people representative of the French population aged 18 and over, including 436 rugby fans - shows that 68% of French people want Bernard Laporte to leave his post as president of the FFR.
