The Court of Cassation will rule on June 28 in the 2008 arbitration case between Bernard Tapie and Crdit Lyonnais, the general counsel having recommended on Thursday to order a new trial concerning Stphane Richard, the former boss of Orange.
The highest court of the judiciary examined the appeals of the four defendants sentenced on November 24, 2021 by the Paris Court of Appeal, which had ruled that this arbitration award, having awarded 404 million euros Bernard Tapie, was fraudulent and had been vitiated to the detriment of the State.
The Realization Consortium (CDR) – entity responsible for managing the liabilities of the Lyonnais – as well as the companies of Bernard Tapie, who died on October 3, 2021, and the State in particular have also filed appeals, which makes a total of 52 means of cassation decide for the Court.
The Advocate General came out in favor of rejecting all of these means except one, which in his view deserves a partial quashing and the holding of a new trial for Stphane Richard and Jean-Franois Rocchi, civil servant and former president of the CDR.
Penalties that could be reduced?
At the time director of the cabinet of the Minister of the Economy Christine Lagarde, Stphane Richard was given a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 euros, which led to his departure from Orange. Jean-Franois Rocchi was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 25,000 euros.
The Advocate General considered that the two men could not be condemned for complicity in the embezzlement of public funds, insofar as the Court of Appeal stressed that they were unaware of the fraudulent nature of the arbitration. A requalification in negligence could be considered, he argued.
For not having lodged an appeal against this sentence, Christine Lagarde was found guilty in 2016 of negligence by the Court of Justice of the Republic, but exempted from sentence. One of the three referees, Pierre Estoup, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 euros for fraud.
You will censure a motivation so ignorant of the very definition of an arbitration, of what a swindle is and which, against all justice, sees in a former high magistrate a crook, where he was only an arbitrator, pleads his lawyer to counsel Me Elodie Le Prado.
Me Patrice Spinosi has fustig the civil death, according to him, inflicts the historical lawyer of Bernard Tapie, Maurice Lantourne: a prohibition to practice for five years, which is added three years of imprisonment including one year firm and 300000 euros of fine.
Noting among other things the contrast between the general release pronounced in the first instance and the appeal decision, he assured that the cassation was the only way to do justice to a man who, for the moment, has lost everything.