The noose is tightening around Bernard Laporte and Mohed Altrad, suspected of having made the short scale like rugby players playing a touch. This is suggested by the survey of the team, which today reveals the content of a 76-page document clarifying the troubled links between these two figures of hexagonal rugby, the boss of the Federation and the boss of the MHR, the Montpellier club. The document comes from the Economic Crime Repression Brigade (BRDE), a summary of a four-year investigation which reports several incriminating elements against Laporte and Altrad who, as a reminder, had been placed in custody. on sight and interviewed for thirty-six hours by the BRDE in September 2020.
The report was sent in July 2021 to the Deputy Prosecutor of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office. According to the sports daily, the PNF would have sent a note on December 21 detailing the qualifications it planned to retain to the two men concerned, as well as to several other people gravitating around this affair, such as the right arm of Bernard Laporte at the FFR, Serge Simon.
In fact: the BRDE was particularly interested in the famous image contract worth 150,000 euros, which linked BL Communication, the company of Bernard Laporte, to the group of Mohed Altrad, contract signed in March 2017, some months before that of sponsorship between the XV of France and the same group. According to investigators, Bernard Laporte “did not inform anyone of the contract for consideration binding him to Altrad and personally intervened as president of the FFR on several occasions, under conditions characterizing the offenses of “illegal taking of interests”, corruption and “traffic of affecting””.
In August 2017, Laporte announced that it had “terminated with retroactive effect” to the contract, but in December 2020, the investigators estimate that 116,500 euros of the sum received by Laporte is still not reimbursed. The Team raises: “If, in four years, Bernard Laporte has not been able to return this sum to Mohed Altrad, the question of a financial dependence of the president of the FFR towards a club president of the Top 14 arises”.
Suspicious calls
For the sponsorship of the Blues jersey, the BRDE wonders about “the lack of competition between potential sponsors” at the same time as “the fair value of this sponsorship”. In June 2017, a first offer of 9.9 million euros per season was offered to GMF, Orange, Société Générale, and BMW, the official partners of the XV of France. But it is the businessman, whose fortune is estimated at 2.8 billion euros, who won the contract for a much lower amount of 6.8 million euros. The police also point to suspicious calls in June 2017 between the president of the FFR and Jean-Daniel Simonet, president of the Appeals Commission, in order to lessen the sanctions taken against the MHR and defend the interests of the southern club. .
Contacted by the team, Laporte’s counsel informs of a trial in September before the Paris Criminal Court: “If the prosecution is considering taking legal action with regard to the only supposed interventions by Bernard Laporte in favor of Mohed Altrad, it is on the basis of an erroneous analysis and firmly contested by Bernard Laporte. The latter will present all the elements in his defense before the trial court next September.
