Bernard Tapie's appeal trial, retried for "fraud" after his release in July 2019 in the arbitration case which had granted him 403 million euros in 2008 to settle his old dispute with Credit Lyonnais, is is open Monday afternoon in Paris.
The businessman and former minister, who fights at 77 years against a double cancer of the stomach and the esophagus, appeared very weakened on his arrival at the court of appeal of Paris.
Dark suit, surgical mask on his face, he didn't make a statement.
The boss of the media group La Provence is retried with five other defendants, including the CEO of Orange Stéphane Richard, chief of staff of the Minister of the Economy Christine Lagarde during the establishment of the arbitration.
And from the first minutes of this appeal trial, Bernard Tapie was angry when the president of the hearing recalled the facts.
According to BFM, the former boss of OM, even wanted to leave the room, before being dissuaded by his lawyer.
Arbitration case: Bernard Tapie's angry blow during the appeal trial pic.twitter.com/zaq3SRT2vn
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) October 12, 2020
Tapie has always denied having "stolen the taxpayer"
This new trial is held fifteen months after the general acquittal pronounced by the Paris Criminal Court on July 9, 2019. The judges then considered that "no element of the file" allowed to affirm that the arbitration, definitively considered irregular by civil justice, had been the subject of "fraudulent maneuvers".
The prosecution, which had asked for prison sentences against five of the six defendants, including five years against Bernard Tapie, had appealed.
The former boss of Olympique de Marseille, who faces seven years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros for "swindle" and "embezzlement", has always denied having "stolen the taxpayer".
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In 2008, an arbitration award, a method of private settlement, awarded him 45 million euros solely for moral damage in compensation for the “fault” of Crédit Lyonnais during the resale of German sports equipment supplier Adidas in the 1990s.
Lagarde condemned by the CJR
But this decision was declared "fraudulent" in civil proceedings because of "old, close and repeated links" between one of the three arbitrators, Pierre Estoup, the businessman and his former lawyer Maurice Lantourne.
Bernard Tapie was therefore ordered to return the millions received.
Bernard Tapie's companies were placed in liquidation on April 30, paving the way for the sale of his assets so that he could repay his debt, the amount of which is still fiercely contested.
The State and the Consortium de Réalisation (CDR), the body responsible for managing the liabilities of Crédit Lyonnais, are civil parties to the second criminal trial.
The only person currently convicted in this case is the former minister Christine Lagarde.
She was convicted at the end of 2016 of "negligence" by the Court of Justice of the Republic but exempted from punishment.
