Paris (AFP)
French businessman Maurice Bidermann, who formed a textile giant in his name and was one of the figures convicted in the Elf affair, died Monday at 87 years, his entourage told AFP.
Maurice Bidermann died in the morning of Monday in a Parisian hospital, according to his entourage, who specifies that he suffered from several chronic diseases but was not a priori affected by Covid-19.
Brother of the singer Régine, he was born in 1932 in Belgium and had established in the 1960s and 1970s a textile empire from a small family group from which he had inherited.
The group, now number one in French men's clothing, then encountered difficulties and, heavily indebted, had to be sold in 1995.
It is in this context that Maurice Bidermann found himself involved in the Elf affair, one of the main French politico-financial scandals of recent decades.
It had erupted following an investigation into a suspicious loan, via offshore circuits, from the oil company to the Bidermann group, in the amount of around 800 million francs (nearly 150 million euros).
Maurice Bidermann was sentenced in 2003 in this case to three years in prison, two of which were suspended and one million euros in fines.
The industrialist then resided in Morocco but continued to display himself with personalities in France, in particular at the end of the 2000s, members of the entourage of Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as the President of the Republic himself. even.
In the early 2010s, he was targeted by an investigation by the Moroccan tax authorities, who suspected him of not having declared all of his income from foreign sources.
© 2020 AFP