This month of February, two long-running legal sagas have finally gone to court in France: those of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Liliane Bettencourt. Another matter, thought long settled, bounced back to Bernard Tapie and into the news.
DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN
 |
| DSK in Lille |
After the two-week trial of the Carlton Affair in Lille
where he stood accused of aggravated pimping, a haggard-looking Dominique
Strauss-Kahn could finally leave town and await the verdict, due in June, with
some optimism. Following many days of testimony by a cast of characters that
included prostitutes and an unsavory Belgian procurer named Dodo La Saumure, the final phase of his
fall from grace contained at least one positive note for DSK when the
prosecutor called for the charges against him to be dropped for lack of
evidence. The man is being judged on legal grounds not moral ones, was the
message, and legally the case was weak.
If this trial with its share of sordid details did not
elicit any laughs, the one who must have raised at least a chuckle was Dodo The
Pimp when he said: "Dominique
Strauss-Kahn has tarnished my reputation."
THE BETTENCOURT CASE
 |
| Liliane Bettencourt |
Twice postponed, the case concerning Liliane Bettencourt,
heir to the L'Oreal fortune and France's richest woman (estimated net worth €33
billion), was finally heard in Bordeaux seven years after Bettencourt's
daughter and only child, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, filed a criminal complaint
for "exploitation of a person's mental and physical fragility for personal
gain". She specifically accused François-Marie Banier, photographer,
writer and society figure, of exercising undue influence on her mother and illegally
obtaining gifts valued at €1 billion, while at the same time driving a wedge
between mother and daughter.
Banier met Liliane Bettencourt when he was commissioned to
photograph her for a magazine in 1987 and became friends with Mrs. Bettencourt
and her husband Guy, who died in 2007. Witty, clever and entertaining, Banier became
a frequent visitor and confidant of Mrs. Bettencourt who was interested in the
arts.
In 2007, tipped off by people on her mother's household
staff, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers became aware of her mother's extreme
generosity toward Banier and feared his increasing hold over her. In addition
to gifts totaling around one billion euros (real estate, life insurance
policies, master paintings, cash) she had also named him sole heir (since revoked).
Those in Mrs. Bettencourt's immediate environment who disliked Banier's
"arrogant ways" were happy to provide Françoise with evidence
(including phone conversations secretly taped by the butler) of "advisors"
exploiting her mother's alleged senility. Françoise's findings as well as her
request that her mother undergo a medical examination of her mental state
infuriated Liliane Bettencourt and caused the estrangement between mother and
daughter that lasted for years but failed to sideline Banier. Françoise then
filed a criminal complaint and turned the tapes over to the police.
 |
| Mrs. Bettencourt with friend Banier |
In all, ten people are alleged to have profited illegally
from Liliane Bettencourt's largesse and fragile mental state. Among them was her
former nurse Alain Thurin, 64, who tried to commit suicide by hanging just hours
before the trial opened and remains today in a coma.
 |
| Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers |
Mrs. Bettencourt did not attend the trial. Frail and judged
by a court-appointed medical team to be suffering from "dementia and
moderately severe Alzheimer's disease" since 2006, she was declared
incompetent to attend to her own affairs in 2011 and has since been placed
under the legal guardianship of her eldest grandson, Jean-Victor Meyers.
The five-week trial in Bordeaux ended last week, with the
verdict to be rendered on May 28th. But that may not be the end of it.
Consider the scenario: a mother-daughter feud stoked by the mother's friend and court jester, an attempted suicide, spying servants, sticky-fingered lawyers, politicians, financial advisors and supplicants, all ready to take advantage of a confused elderly widow with too much money. This has all the makings of a great television series.
Consider the scenario: a mother-daughter feud stoked by the mother's friend and court jester, an attempted suicide, spying servants, sticky-fingered lawyers, politicians, financial advisors and supplicants, all ready to take advantage of a confused elderly widow with too much money. This has all the makings of a great television series.
BERNARD TAPIE
Controversial French businessman and sometime actor Bernard
Tapie got a nasty surprise on February 17th when the Court of
Appeals of Paris overturned the 2008 decision by the Court of Arbitration that
awarded Tapie €403 million for the fraudulent sale by the Crédit Lyonnais bank
(CL) of Adidas, a company Tapie owned at the time. The Court of Appeals found
that Tapie and his lawyer had pre-existing links to one of the three Arbitrators
of the case, whose judgment was therefore considered not impartial and rendered
the conclusion invalid. It is not clear how much money Tapie will have to
reimburse. |
| Bernard Tapie with President Mittérand |
 |
| Bernard Tapie with "supporters" Sarkozy and Lagarde |
This may seem just another business dispute, but everything
concerning the colorful Bernard Tapie tends to become a matter of national
interest. He is handsome, brash, pugnacious and visible, able to charm men and women alike. A self-made millionaire, he has
made and lost fortunes, owned a successful cycling team (winning the Tour de
France twice), and the OM football club of Marseilles (national champion four
times in a row). But in 1994 he was accused of match fixing, spent six months
in prison, and had to resign as government minister. Released from prison,
bankrupt, banned from football and ineligible for public office, he decided to
become an actor and appeared in a film by Claude Lelouch, Hommes, Femmes, Mode d'Emploi, on stage in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
on television in the series Commissaire
Valence and as a TV game show host. In 2011 he was the subject of an
American documentary: "Who is Bernard Tapie?" by Marina Zenovich.
In 2013 he bought a string of newspapers in the south,
including the biggest regional paper La
Provence, which brought him back to Marseilles where he was fondly
remembered for his golden years at OM and where his outsize personality was a natural
fit. Here, the gutsy street kid who outsmarts the stuffed-shirt bankers, dares
to think big, is bling-bling to his eyebrows, happy to show off with a yacht,
private plane, and multiple residences, is a bit of a comic-strip hero.
He borrowed heavily to buy the newspapers and had to sell his yacht and private plane to cover debts, and following the recent cancellation of his arbitrage award many of his assets have been seized. But to his fans, this is just another setback he will overcome. The man has been up and he has been down, but he is larger than life. He will find a way, he will be back.
When and how? Stay tuned for the next instalment.
He borrowed heavily to buy the newspapers and had to sell his yacht and private plane to cover debts, and following the recent cancellation of his arbitrage award many of his assets have been seized. But to his fans, this is just another setback he will overcome. The man has been up and he has been down, but he is larger than life. He will find a way, he will be back.
When and how? Stay tuned for the next instalment.
