Laporte-Altrad trial: “Chavanski”, briefcase and broken life… Behind the scenes and anecdotes from the audience

We met a thousand people, in nine days of trial and more than eighty hours of debate. Talkative lawyers like one-eyed magpies, magistrates stiff as justice, judges in robes and ordinary people, attracted by the richness of the sessions… unless it’s the smell of blood. The federal elect too, since probably sensing that the exercise would be painful for the president (Bernard Laporte) and his right-hand man (Serge Simon), the FFR had put forward the idea of ​​a major mobilization of the flagship’s big coats: by In the end, only Bernie’s most loyal lieutenants came to Porte de Clichy daily: Antoine Martinez, the elected official in charge of insurance relations and player agents; Patrick Buisson, vice president in charge of amateur competitions; Alexandre Martinez, treasurer of the Federation or Henri Mondino, the person in charge of territorial reform. Are we forgetting someone? Yes go! Christian Dulin! The secretary general of the Fed was initially going to be heard by the president of the court, as a witness. And when he realized, over the course of five days of hearing, that Rose-Marie Hunault had finally decided to dispense with his testimony, the former Alpine rugby boss let out a slight annoyance: “If I’m useless, you have to tell me, huh…”

In room 212 of the Criminal Court in Paris, two different worlds, separated by several thousand kilometers, suddenly collided, according to the circumstances that we know. At the opening of the trial, President Hunault also apologized for “They totally misunderstand the world of rugby”. However, on this subject, we quickly realized that in the space of a few weeks, this little strand of a woman, who holds in her hands the future of five of the most influential men in French and international ruby, had nevertheless ingested the entirety of this eminently technical dossier, made up of the Ligue/Fédé war, obscure EPCR meetings or the abortive Ile-de-France merger with the ease attributed to intelligent people, even putting the accused on the ropes every time that they made a mistake in a date, a place, an event…

Laughter, tears and the springs of a thriller

The attendance smiled, yes, when the president gave Mohed Altrad’s club an impossible “win 50 to 2”or when true Jacky Lorenzaccio. Or when Antoine Vey, the Hérault billionaire’s lawyer, baptized the elect Maurice Buzy-Pucheu, Maurice “Buzy-Puchman”, or when Serge Simon’s evoked the “honorable decision” Racing captain Henri “Chavanski”. We were also moved to tears when the anonymous person on trial, Benoit Rover, co-director of the Score XV company prosecuted for abuse of social welfare, burst into tears in the bar evoking “a broken life and a frustrated future” : Guilty or not, Rover is also the father of four children and if the judge were to uphold the prosecutor’s injunction for him, namely a ban on any rugby-related activity, he would lose his job at Gip France 2023 and all faith in the future …

So there were laughter and tears in the Paris Criminal Court. Above all, there was the fierce fighting between robed men who did not hesitate to draw their swords when the circumstances were right. “Your question is stupid!”belched Jean-Pierre Versini Campinchi, one of the lawyers for the head of the FFR, when Yann Gasnier, the council of the Anticor association, asked Laurent Gabbanini, director general of the Fédé, if the testimony that this Ci had just given under oath it was not “altered by his friendship with Bernard Laporte”. It was even believed, one night when the hearing ended at 11 p.m., that Antoine Vey, the spiritual son of “Acquitator Dupont-Moretti”, would come to blows with Philippe Pech de Laclause, the League’s lawyer, who threatened with appeal. to the president the next time he accused him of “sleeping during debates”.

It’s just that sometimes we thought we were in the middle of a thriller, ladies and gentlemen, during this trial over which the specter of corruption hovered uninterruptedly. You knew the story of Claude Atcher and the Mongolian taxi driver, right? Nope ? Us neither. Celine Lasek, adviser to said Claude, told us: “The financial prosecution tried to prove that the FFR had bought the World Cup. The police even heard from a taxi driver who apparently said that during a trip to Mongolia, my client had kept his briefcase on his knees the entire trip. Three years. After the events, the police asked him: “Did you carry Mr. Atcher in 2017? – Maybe… – And you had your briefcase on your lap? – Maybe… But it’s pretty common, you know… You don’t have memory problems, sir?” ?” A bit serious, Madam President! This whole story is just an accumulation of fantasies”. And so, did you know about the billionaire, the president, and the private jet? Nope ? On February 14, 2017, while a decisive meeting of the EPCR (the body that manages the European Cups) was taking place in Geneva, the question of the takeover of the Gloucester club by Mohed Altrad had to be decided. the “subject being eminently political”, in the words then used by Serge Simon. It was Bernard Laporte himself who attended the vote that day, Pascal Pape, the federal elected official who usually sits on the EPCR, remained on other fronts. “Mr Laporte, so said Master Gasnier, How did you get to Switzerland that day? – By car, answered the former manager of the RCT. he was skiing in Vars (Hautes Alpes, Editor’s note) and the trip took me about three and a half hours – So you didn’t go by plane? In fact ?” I heard from this that there had been a rumor for some time that Laporte, in order to join as quickly as possible the EPCR meeting that was supposed to have an immediate impact on Mohed Altrad’s interests, had borrowed the latter’s private jet. The manga effect was definitely shattered when Fanny Colin, lawyer for the president of the Federation, launched the judges: “We attach to the investigation file a note of 80 euros for the toll corresponding to the route that Mr. Laporte made that day.” A thriller, we tell you… A thriller with any fall, of course. But it’s still a thriller…

Altrad, a salary of 25,000 francs a month

But the strangest moment of the trial came shortly after, when the president announced that she was proceeding with the traditional “personality surveys”. Weird ? Yes. Because in twenty minutes, the defendants undressed in public and en masse, thus we learned that Bernard Laporte received an annual salary of 50,000 euros, in response to his functions in the 6 Nations committee and in World Rugby; that Serge Simon had not been an employee of the FFR since last March and had plans to establish a company in Bordeaux; or that Mohed Altrad, France’s 32nd fortune, received a monthly salary of “25,000 francs for thirty years”the date he had assembled his “first box”. Put away your kleenex, good folks: Needless to say, the dividends the head of MHR receives from the myriad companies he owns obviously don’t fit the bill. “monthly salary” that the judge then presented him and that, as it stands, Mohed Altrad is safe from want for ten generations…

In the end, we will complete this babble without a priori having any other vocation than to distract you, excite you or satisfy your curiosity, due to the verbal protuberance of Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, tenor of the legal profession and Laporte’s lawyer, an oratory exercise that, we regret, it would have been so inaudible, since it was delivered at the end of an accusation that greatly shook the audience. What was Versini saying on Tuesday night? Word for word, he exposed the unknown part of the “Laporte-Altrad” trial, created “a case within a case” by borrowing from Charles Pasqua’s lexicon, returned to the origins of the investigation. “Do you remember, Madam President, Eric Russo? He was the prosecutor at the beginning of the case, the magistrate who mobilized dozens of investigators for two years on the issue at hand. After leaving this twenty-volume baby in the arms of prosecutor Dulin, who since then has tried to put squares in circles, Mr. Russo sold himself, with in his suitcases the knowledge and secrets of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, to an American law firm, Quinn Emanuel, a firm whose object is the protection of serious economic crimes. In 2021, the Anticor association, a civil party in his lawsuit, even awarded him its “slipper award”, highlighting the position for the least particular, even scoundrel, of this magistrate. that to deflect the fire. the facts, Madam President. And I will conclude with this phrase as old as Egypt: “Who will take care of the guards, madam? This is your court and no other… No other… Thank you…”