Investigations into suspicions of favoritism in the operating contract for the Parc des Expositions in Paris, where construction of the highly controversial Triangle Tower began, were entrusted in March to an investigating judge, the financial prosecutor’s office said on Friday. .
The suspicions relate to the operating contract for the Porte de Versailles exhibition center, located in the south of the capital.
The City of Paris had terminated the concession contract awarded to the company Viparis, then had again entrusted it with the operation of the event complex via a long-term lease following a call for tenders deemed contestable.
In particular, the deadlines for submitting tenders were considered too short, given the complexity of the project. In addition, the City had accepted that Viparis does not pay the entry fee of 263 million euros requested from candidates. In exchange, this subsidiary of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield had to waive the compensation for early termination of the initial contract.
The mayor LR of the 7th arrondissement of Paris Rachida Dati had made a report in July 2020 to justice on the construction project of the tower which must stretch over 42 floors and culminate 180 m high, in the perimeter of the Parc des expositions. Then the Anticor association had filed a complaint with civil action in February 2021.
Ms. Dati and Anticor relied on a report from the Ile-de-France regional chamber of accounts of July 2020 which estimated that the Triangle Tower project had been inserted in a questionable way within the enclosure of the Parc des expositions.
In addition, the report considered that the concessionaire had been exempted from paying the 263 million euros entry fee while the damage linked to the termination remained unproven.
The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) had opened a preliminary investigation for favoritism and concealment of favoritism in June 2021, then a judicial investigation in March, he specified, confirming information from the Parisian.
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The City of Paris, like Unibail-Rodamco Westfield and its subsidiary Viparis, rejects the accusations and claims to have complied with the rules of the call for tenders.
On the construction itself of the Tour Triangle, also confides Viparis, a collective of associations including France Nature Environnement and SOS Paris filed a complaint on December 13, 2021 with the PNF. This complaint is still being analyzed, the financial prosecutor’s office said on Friday.
This tower, whose construction work began in February, will not start to come out of the ground until the summer of 2023 and should be delivered in 2026, according to the promoter’s schedule.