French businessman Bernard Tapie went on trial in Paris on Monday over a 453-million-dollar sum he won in a 2008 arbitration case against a formerly state-owned bank.
Tapie, a former government minister, who also headed the Olympique Marseille football club from 1986 to 1994, is accused of fraud and embezzling public funds.
An arbitration panel made the award to Tapie after he alleged that his 1993 sale of sportswear manufacturer Adidas had been mishandled by the Credit Lyonnais bank.
But the Paris Court of Appeals overturned the award in civil proceedings in 2015 because of connections between Tapie’s lawyer and one of the members of the panel.
The same affair saw International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde convicted of negligence in 2016 for having failed to appeal the ruling at the time, when she was finance minister.
She was not penalised, however.
Tapie, 76, who is suffering from cancer, denied any wrongdoing in an interview with newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche earlier.
“This trial is one of the most important episodes of my life,’’ he told the newspaper.
As well as being a prominent businessman and sporting manager, Tapie had two brief ministerial terms in Socialist governments in the early 1990s and was at various times a television presenter and singer as well as appearing in cinema and on stage.
He gave his profession as “actor’’ in court on Monday, public broadcaster FranceInfo reported.
