The Armando Pereira affair rebounds in France. Bloomberg announced last week that the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office had opened “a preliminary investigation into charges of corruption of persons not exercising public office, money laundering and concealment of these crimes.” This investigation was opened in September 2023 and is still ongoing. It directly follows the arrest in July 2023 of Altice’s number 2, Armando Pereira, arrested in Portugal and suspected of fraud, corruption and money laundering.
In addition to Pereira, the Portuguese investigation targets several dozen managers of the group and is suspected of having set up a commission system by favoring Portuguese companies controlled by relatives of Pereira and responsible for providing services to Altice group entities.
Telecom equipment was thus acquired by SFR, owned by the Altice group, from Portuguese companies managed by relatives of Armando Pereira, according to Le Monde. At that time, Armando Pereira was deputy general manager of the operator alongside Alain Weill, and was in charge of relations with subcontractors and suppliers.
Pay off debts
Altice presents itself as a victim of this corruption affair and refuses to comment. Pereira, who also says he is innocent, was initially placed under house arrest in Portugal, a measure finally lifted in October 2023 upon posting a bail of 10 million euros.
Patrick Drahi, owner of the Altice group and close to Pereira, claims to have been “betrayed” by his ex-partner. During a speech in August 2023, the manager nevertheless estimated that the volume of SFR contracts concerned by the Portuguese investigation represented only 2% of purchases carried out by Altice France. The manager has launched several internal audit procedures and is counting on the sale of several important assets of the Altice group to pay off more than 60 billion euros of debt accumulated over the last ten years following the acquisition strategy carried out by Altice . As of November 2023, the company had already sold 257 of its data centers to the bank Morgan Stanley in an effort to alleviate the debt of the Altice group.
This is not the first time that suspicions of favoritism have targeted Armando Pereira: as Le Monde recalls, his proximity to the fiber optic installation company ERT had aroused the interest of the Luxembourg justice system in 2012, which sought to understand how this company was able to gradually oust SFR’s historic suppliers before finally being bought by the operator in 2016. The company’s lawyers then recognized that Armando Pereira was indeed the founder of the company, but that he had resold all its shares and holdings at the end of 2012, shortly before the start of its merger with SFR.