New legal troubles for Bernard Laporte. The president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR), withdrawn since mid-December, was placed in police custody for a few hours on Tuesday in an aggravated tax evasion money laundering case, but came out in the evening without prosecution at this stage. . “He left without any summons from the police, nor presentation to an examining magistrate,” one of his lawyers, Me Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, told AFP.
“It is a case in which he is implicated for having been associated with rugby friends a long time ago. He has neither been accused of having defrauded nor of having received any sum,” he added. . The national financial prosecutor’s office (PNF) confirmed that he had emerged free.
A separate investigation into the corruption case
According to a source familiar with the matter, this investigation is separate from the corruption case in which the French rugby boss was sentenced last month at first instance to a two-year suspended prison sentence, alongside the businessman Mohed Altrad, president of the Montpellier club and sentenced for his part to 18 months in prison suspended. The two men were sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court for a corruption pact linked in particular to the sponsorship of the jersey of the XV of France.
In office since the end of 2016, the president of the FFR, re-elected in 2020 for a four-year term, was found guilty of five of the six offenses for which he was prosecuted, including passive corruption and influence peddling. Since he appealed the decision, his suspended prison sentence, as well as the ban on exercising the activity of president of the FFR for a period of two years, are not immediately enforceable.
The new investigation, which led to him being placed in police custody, is also distinct from that of the PNF targeting the organizing committee of the France-2023 World Cup for favouritism, influence peddling and corruption.
Two other people also placed in the station on sight
This Tuesday, Laporte was “summoned for a hearing by tax police, he went there with a tax lawyer”, one of his lawyers, Me Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, told AFP. “It is perfectly scandalous that the prosecution chose the date of the election of Mr. (Patrick) Buisson to fix that of the hearing and that the disclosure of this hearing was made the same day”, a-t- he added, castigating “a relentlessness of the PNF”.
The investigations, launched in August 2020, were entrusted to the Financial Judicial Investigation Service (SEJF). Two other people were taken into custody at the same time as Bernard Laporte.
In the middle of a referendum of the FFR
This police custody comes in the middle of a referendum of the FFR during which the French clubs must approve, or not, the proposal of Bernard Laporte to appoint Patrick Buisson as deputy president of the Federation. Some 1,500 amateur clubs are called upon to validate the candidacy of Patrick Buisson, until then vice-president in charge of amateur rugby. They have until noon Thursday to vote. “I think the clubs are a bit fed up with all this. The clubs need calm. It’s more time to get together, to come together and push behind our XV of France than to live with electoral deadlines. We must advocate the gathering and that’s what everyone expects,” Buisson recently explained to AFP.
“A few months before the World Cup (September 8 – October 28, editor’s note), we must not be in the time of the division but in that of the gathering. For rugby, not for personal interests. To succeed in this Cup of the world. Division only leads to failure,” added the leader. The World Cup in France will open with a clash between the Blues of Fabien Galthié and the legendary All Blacks. This new legal episode also appears a few weeks before the start of the Six Nations Tournament (February 4-March 18), of which the XV of France is the title holder.