Bad news is piling up for the Casino group (Monoprix, Franprix, CDiscount, etc.), in great difficulty. While the distributor has just initiated a conciliation procedure with its creditors, Jean-Charles Naouri, its CEO and owner, 74, was placed in police custody on Thursday 1er June, as part of a preliminary investigation launched by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), as revealed The Sunday newspaper.
The hearings at the financial brigade, confirmed in World by the PNF without specifying their ” frame “, continued late into the evening. The police custody was finally lifted before 10 p.m., and no charges were brought at this stage of the investigations against Mr. Naouri. The PNF confirmed to the World “the continuation of the investigations in the preliminary investigation”.
In March, the PNF indicated that it had opened, in February 2020, a preliminary investigation into the Casino group for “organized price manipulation, active and passive private corruption” and “insider trading committed during 2018 and 2019”. The PNF took up the case following a report from the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), which itself has been investigating Casino Group’s financial communication since 2016.
A “Miguet affair, because everything revolves around him”
The facts on which the financial brigade is responsible for shedding light concern, it seems, the links between the distributor and Nicolas Miguet, owner of newspapers and stock exchange sites, and engaged in politics at the head of the Rally of French taxpayers (RCF).
A source close to the matter underlines a “Miguet case, because everything revolves around him”recalling the real or supposed network of the person concerned, his nerve and his convictions, in particular for price manipulation, on four files since 2011 by the AMF (one of which is the subject of an appeal). “Who is he to influence the stock market? »pretends to wonder, mockingly, another source, which however notes that the president of the Association for the representation of revolted shareholders has been able to reveal himself to the Casino group as a “super communicator with good ideas”.
Why did Casino call on a man with such a record with the stock market policeman? Was the journalist paid by the group to distill in the weekly Purse morethe letter The Stock Exchange or the Stock Exchange site for recommendations to buy the distributor’s action? In an attempt to answer these questions, searches were carried out in May 2022 at the headquarters of Casino, at Mr. Miguet’s home, in Normandy, as well as at the home of Mr. Naouri.
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