will be prosecuted for “corruption of a foreign public official” in Togo and “complicity in breach of trust” in Togo and Guinea, according to the newspaper. The World. The hearing will be held from December 7 to 17. Two other directors of the group are also involved in this process: Gilles Alix, then general director of the Bolloré group, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, then international director of the Euro RSCG agency (currently Havas), for “complicity in breach of trust.”
Investigators suspect that he provided communication advice to African leaders through Havas, with the aim that another of his subsidiaries, Bolloré Africa Logistics, formerly called SDV, would obtain in exchange the attribution of the management of the ports of Lomé and Conakry. Bolloré, owner of the Vivendi company, owner of 11.79% of Prisa shares, publisher of EL PAÍS, was arrested in 2018 for this matter and later released.
The French businessman’s lawyers have stated that it is “impossible to hold a fair trial,” according to a statement released to the AFP agency on Thursday. They also announced that they will appeal the court decision issued on Wednesday “for procedural reasons.” “We firmly reaffirm that the operations that occurred more than 15 years ago between the Bolloré and Havas groups, of which Mr. Vincent Bolloré was not aware, relating to 300,000 euros paid by checks and regularly recorded in the accounts, fell within the normal framework of commercial relations between these two groups,” their lawyers declared on Thursday.
The Breton businessman, as well as Gilles Alix, then CEO of the Bolloré group, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, international director at Havas, had requested an appearance with prior recognition of guilt to avoid a lengthy criminal process. During the public hearing in February 2021, they acknowledged the facts and submitted to a penalty of 375,000 euros, but the judge did not accept it and sent the case back to the investigation phase.
At the center of the investigation, opened after the complaint of a former French-Spanish associate of Bolloré, Jacques Dupuydauby, are the advice given in 2010 by Havas during the electoral campaigns of Alpha Condé in Guinea and Faure Gnassingbé in Togo. Both would have benefited from the consulting services of Havas, led by Jean-Philippe Dorent.
Months after becoming his country’s first freely elected president, Condé terminated the contract of the Conakry port operator – a subsidiary of the French shipping company NCT Necotrans – and gave it to his rival Bolloré.
In 2013, a French court ordered the Bolloré group to pay Necotrans 2 million euros ($2.4 million) in compensation. Necotrans, a logistics specialist in Africa, went bankrupt in June 2017 and was acquired shortly after by the Bolloré group.
Dorent also worked on the communications strategy of Gnassingbé, who succeeded his father Gnassingbé Eyadema after his death in 2005. After Gnassingbé’s re-election to a second term in 2010, the Bolloré group won the management contract for the port of Lomé for a period of 35 years, a decision also questioned by the former operator.
“The connection that some are trying to make between obtaining these concessions and communication operations has no economic basis and reveals a great lack of knowledge of this industry,” the multinational then declared in a statement. Asking about the Conakry port concession by the newspaper The World In 2016, Condé said that Bolloré “met all the conditions of the tender” and was also “a friend.”
