Paris (AFP)

The Paris Court of Appeal, which was due to rule on Wednesday in the controversial 2008 arbitration case between Bernard Tapie and Crédit Lyonnais, postponed its decision to November 24 due to the death of the man on Sunday. business.

"In view of the death certificate" of Mr. Tapie, the court "noted the extinction of the public action" against him, declared the president Sophie Clément.

It set for November 24 at 9:00 a.m. the new deliberation concerning the five other defendants in the case, including the boss of Orange Stéphane Richard.

At the end of the trial in the spring, the court was initially due to render its decision on Wednesday to decide a second time in this case, one of the components of the titanic dispute of more than a quarter of a century between the businessman and its historical bank.

For Bernard Tapie, the procedure will remain with the general acquittal pronounced by the criminal court on July 9, 2019: the appeal court will not pronounce either acquittal or conviction, due to the termination of the public action against him.

On the other hand, it must decide on the fate of Stéphane Richard, then chief of staff of the Minister of the Economy Christine Lagarde, and on those of the historical lawyer of Bernard Tapie Maurice Lantourne, of the former magistrate Pierre Estoup and two senior officials.

Bernard Tapie died Sunday at the age of 78 at his Parisian home from cancer.

A mass in his memory takes place Wednesday at the end of the morning in Paris and a fiery chapel will be erected Thursday in Marseille, where he is to be buried on Friday.

In this case, he was suspected, with accomplices, of having "manipulated", to the detriment of the State, a 2008 arbitration aimed at settling his long dispute with Credit Lyonnais over the resale of sports equipment maker Adidas in the 1990s.

This arbitration award, which had awarded him 403 million euros, including 45 million for moral damage alone, has since been annulled in civil proceedings for "fraud" and he was definitively ordered to reimburse the sums received.

At first instance, the court had however considered that "no element" of the file allowed to affirm the existence of "fraudulent maneuvers" of the former buyer of Adidas.

The six defendants had been released but the prosecution had appealed.

Started in October 2020, the appeal trial was postponed to the spring due to the deterioration in Bernard Tapie's state of health.

He had resumed in the spring in his presence but had ended in early June without him.

On June 2, the public prosecutor's office requested against him five years of suspended imprisonment for complicity in fraud and embezzlement of public funds, as well as sentences ranging from three months suspended to two years firm against his five co-convicts.

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