Orange ex-boss Stéphane Richard was sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence on Monday by the Paris Court of Appeal, in the latest judicial ricochet dated the sprawl in the controversial arbitration of 2008 between Bernard Tapie and Crédit Lyonnais.
At the end of this third trial and as suggested by the Advocate General of the Court of Cassation, the magistrates re-qualified the alleged offense to the former director of Cabinet of Christine Lagarde to the Ministry of the negligence Economy rather than complicity in the embezzlement of public funds. Stéphane Richard was also sentenced to a fine of 15,000 euros fine.
He had been retained in March-April alongside the senior official Jean-François Rocchi, former manager of the realization consortium (CDR), an entity responsible for managing the liabilities of Crédit Lyonnais. The latter was also sentenced to a six -month suspended sentence for negligence as well as a fine of 8,000 euros.
They will also have to pay them two 10,000 euros in damages and 10,000 euros in lawyers for civil parties.
Faced with the defendants present to listen to the decision, the Court highlighted “the accumulation of negligence” on their part. “The facts are serious because they allowed the scam” and “reveal a behavior in which the interest, in particular financial, of the State is not the priority,” said the president, however taking into account the fact that they had never been previously condemned.
“The court criticized me for having committed negligence in the preparatory phase at the entry into arbitration, which I dispute deeply,” reacted to AFP Stéphane Richard, 63. “It seems to me to seriously ignore the exact role and the responsibilities resulting from a chief of staff in a ministry like Bercy,” he continued, adding that he was planning to form an appeal in cassation.
His conviction in November 2021 had cost him his post at the head of the historic telephone operator: alongside three other defendants, Mr. Richard had been inflicted a year in prison suspended and 50,000 euros fine for complicity in the complicity of embezzlement of public funds.
– 246 million recovered –
This affair stems from the conflict between Bernard Tapie, who died in 2021, and Crédit Lyonnais, around the acquisition of the German equipment supplier Adidas in the 1990s.
In 2008 private arbitration was right to Bernard Tapie and granted him more than 400 million euros, including 45 million to the sole title of moral damage. But this controversial sentence was then canceled in civilian for “fraud” in 2015 and the former minister sentenced to reimburse.
A criminal investigation had in parallel were opened to determine whether the arbitration had been rigged in favor of Bernard Tapie, and to the detriment of the State.
Six men, including the ex-boss of Olympique de Marseille, had been returned to justice but, at first instance, all released dramatically. On appeal nevertheless, the Court had decided in the opposite direction, believing that the arbitration had been biased to “make the” Tapie part “triumph”.
Subsequently, the Court of Cassation definitively validated the condemnations for the scam of the historic lawyer of Bernard Tapie, Maurice Lantourne, and one of the three referees who had written the sentence, Pierre Estoup, as well as the release of an official.
Concerning Stéphane Richard and Jean-François Rocchi, on the other hand, the high court noted that they could not be convicted of complicity in embezzlement of public funds, insofar as the court of appeal had, in its decision, recognized that they “ignored the fraudulent nature of arbitration”.
Christine Lagarde had already been found guilty of negligence but exempt from sentence in 2016 in this case by the Court of Justice of the Republic – the sole authorized to judge the ministers for acts committed in office.
MM. Estoup and Lantourne, as well as the liquidation companies of Bernard Tapie, were definitively sentenced to pay nearly 400 million at the CDR, which is 100% owned by the State.
The CDR told AFP to have recovered, at June 2025, 246 million euros on a total debt which amounted, with interest and legal costs, to 700 million in 2023.
Posted on June 30 at 4:09 p.m., AFP
