The multi-year judicial soap opera Tapie resumes. The Paris Court of Appeal ruled on Friday February 28 that the debt of Bernard Tapie in the arbitration case, the exact calculation of which has been the subject of fierce legal battle for four years, amounted to at 438 million euros, according to the judgment consulted by Agence France-presse (AFP).
This quantification is a victory for the creditors of the businessman, because it largely corresponds to the sums granted in 2008 to Bernard Tapie by an arbitration – supposed to settle his dispute with Crédit-Lyonnais in the resale case. Adidas in 1993 – that justice ordered him to reimburse by adding interest.
After the cancellation of this private sentence in 2015, the companies of the businessman, who is 77 years old fighting against metastasized cancer, are threatened with insolvency.
“The court did not respond to the arguments developed by the companies” from Mr. Tapie, “And the question must therefore be submitted to the Court of Cassation”, reacted to AFP Me François Kopf, a lawyer for the businessman who disputes the entirety of his debt.
The viability of the reimbursement debated
On the eve of his order to reimburse, in December 2015, the former boss of Olympique de Marseille, himself in personal liquidation since the 1990s, had placed his companies, which hold all of his property, under the protection of the bankruptcy law. But the former minister believes that he will have nothing to repay until the amount of his debt has not been finally settled by justice.
In November 2017, a judge-commissioner of the Paris Commercial Court had rendered a decision reducing to 322 million euros the debt due by the Consortium of realization (CDR), the entity in charge of the inheritance of Credit Lyonnais. It was this decision that the Court of Appeal overturned Friday, almost five months after the hearing on 1st October 2019. Beyond determining how much Mr. Tapie owes, there is also the question of how he will reimburse.
Commercial justice has therefore been examining for four years the repayment schedules proposed by the companies GBT (Groupe Bernard Tapie), majority shareholder of the media group La Provence, and FIBT (Financière et Immobilière Bernard Tapie), which owns its Parisian mansion and his villa in Saint-Tropez.
After the rejection of the first two reimbursement plans and the placement of these companies in receivership in early 2019, a third plan is now being examined at the Bobigny Commercial Court. Debates on its viability resume on March 4, before a possible decision in several weeks. The prosecution and the CDR are demanding judicial liquidation and the immediate seizure of property.
–
