Recently implicated in two murder cases, the sulphurous businessman Arnaud Mimran appears from Tuesday at the Paris Assizes for the kidnapping and kidnapping with a view to his extortion of a wealthy Swiss financier in January 2015.
Arnaud Mimran, 49, convicted in a vast case of “carbon tax” fraud, is on trial for three weeks alongside five other defendants, including one of his relatives, the former Thai boxing champion Farid Khider.
A seventh man, wanted, will be tried in his absence for concealment.
Fallen golden boy
The former "golden boy" appears in custody, after his indictment in April in two old cases: the investigation into the murder in 2011 of his ex-father-in-law, billionaire Claude Dray, and that into the murder in 2010 by another figure in the carbon tax case, Samy Souied.
Before his implication in these cases, he was to be released on May 9, after having finished serving his eight-year prison sentence to which he had been sentenced on appeal in Paris in 2017 for his participation in the fraud in the market of CO2 emission allowances, a scam of 283 million euros.
Arnaud Mimran "denies from the outset" having ordered the kidnapping of the Swiss financier and having been the main beneficiary of the extortion, underlines his lawyer Jean-Marc Fedida.
Early release
On January 15, 2015, the Swiss trader was kidnapped near Paris by four hooded men and taken to an apartment in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis).
His jailers order him to carry out for a few million euros of purchases of securities of a company under American law of which Arnaud Mimran and his ex-partner are shareholders and which is "an empty shell" according to the stock market policeman of the United States .
The trader is finally released after nearly six days of confinement.
An early release linked according to the accusation to two external events: the murder two days earlier of the alleged "leader" of the kidnappers, followed by the arrest of Arnaud Mimran as part of the investigation into the VAT scam .
Indicted and remanded in custody in this case, he would have remained in contact with the trader from prison, worrying about whether he was going to file a complaint.
Arnaud Mimran had "no interest, no motive to participate in such an operation", assures Me Fedida.
For the prosecution on the contrary, this great poker player was financially at bay at the time.
He would also have been under the pressure of a figure of the organized crime Kamel Berkaoui, to whom he made buy shares.
In debt until the "blow"
The latter must be retried in the fall in a case of cocaine trafficking between the Dominican Republic and France, involving two former border police officers (PAF) from Roissy, for which he was sentenced in February 2019 to 20 years of criminal imprisonment.
Arnaud Mimran was released in the correctional aspect of this case called "Excess baggage", but the prosecution appealed.
In debt, Arnaud Mimran would have decided to mount this "blow" to allow him to earn money quickly, by bringing in the Swiss banker under a false pretext.
He would have called on "Titax", suspected of being a rising figure in organized crime and met through Farid Khider, and his "team of criminals" to carry out his plan.
The kidnappers of the Swiss trader had explained to the latter also detain Arnaud Mimran, present at the scene of the kidnapping the day after the kidnapping, a blue mark on his face.
A "make-up" according to the judges intended to make believe in a beating to force the banker to make his first purchases of shares.
The next day, Arnaud Mimran left for a weekend in London and was arrested on his return to Paris.
His co-defendants also deny any involvement in the facts.
Originally scheduled for May 2019, the trial had been postponed twice.
The verdict is expected on June 25.
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