Billionaire ‘scaffolding king’ guilty of bribing rugby boss

13 Dec 2022

A French billionaire known as the ‘king of scaffolding’ was found guilty of corruption in connection with his construction company’s sponsorship deal with the French national rugby team.

Paris judges sentenced Mohed Altrad to an 18-month suspended jail term and handed him a €50,000 ($52,770) fine, saying they refrained from an outright management ban to avoid “disproportionate” consequences for a businessman with no prior convictions.

The court ruled on Tuesday that the founder of the eponymous building giant had improper dealings with the head of France’s rugby federation, Bernard Laporte, who was also convicted.

At the heart of the case is a €180,000 payment in 2017 to a firm owned by Laporte from the Altrad group holding company. Judges say that in exchange, Laporte helped the businessman win a jersey sponsorship deal, provided improper assistance during a disciplining procedure to the Montpellier rugby team that he owns, and lobbied in favour of a plan by Altrad to buy a stake in a UK team.

The payment, as part of an image rights contract that was never carried out, “sealed the corruption relationship between Mr Altrad and Mr Laporte”, Judge Rose-Marie Hunault said. Laporte’s behaviour “harmed the image of rugby”, she added.

Fall from grace

The conviction is a fall from grace for Altrad, who became the first Frenchman to be named “World Entrepreneur of the Year” by audit firm EY in 2015 and has dabbled in politics as well as literature. The ruling also comes as France prepares to host the Rugby World Cup in 2023.

Altrad is worth $3.1-billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. He owns 78% of the group’s holding Altrad Investment Authority, according to a court document.

Altrad’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, said his client will decide in the coming days whether to appeal against the Paris criminal court’s verdict.

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“Mohed Altrad never intended to illegally obtain any favours from Bernard Laporte,” Vey said. “The Altrad group is neither concerned nor impacted by this ruling and Mohed Altrad will continue to invest his time and energy in management missions for his group, its employees and partners.”

Read more: “An Arab Can Make It in France, Winning Entrepreneur Altrad Says”

Born into a Bedouin community in northern Syria in about 1950, Altrad arrived in France as a student five decades ago, earning a doctorate in computer science, and worked for French companies Alcatel and Thomson before leaving for a job at the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.

After returning to France in the 1980s, he started and then sold a software company and then in 1985 bought a bankrupt scaffolding producer near Montpellier to create Altrad.

Through a long series of acquisitions, he built up and diversified the company across at least 50 countries and into fields ranging from offshore oil and gas and nuclear power to industrial production. The group has sales of about €4.5-billion and employs 62,000 people, taking into account firms acquired recently.

The Altrad group still remains true to its roots and provided the scaffolding structures for the most recent repainting of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Altrad bought the Montpellier Herault rugby club in 2011 and ran an unsuccessful campaign to become mayor of the southern French city in 2020. Bloomberg/DM

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Fall from grace