Billionaire French tycoon Vincent Bollore was on Tuesday detained as part of a corruption investigation into his group’s activities in West Africa, where it operates several ports, legal sources said.
The 66-year-old head of the Bollore Group was taken into custody in the Paris suburb of Nanterre for questioning about how the group obtained contracts to run the Port of Lome in Togo and Port of Conakry port in Guinea, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
The 195-year-old company, which has interests in construction, logistics, media, advertising and shipping, issued a statement denying “any illegal actions” in its African operations.
Bollore director general Gilles Alix, and a senior executive from the company’s communications subsidiary Havas, Jean-Philippe Dorent, were also taken into custody, a judicial source said.
Investigators are probing allegations that the group corrupted officials to clinch the Lome and Conakry port concessions in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
The ports are among several operated by Bollore’s African logistics arm, which also has African rail concessions.
Investigators from France’s financial crimes unit are probing possible links between the tenders and communications work done by Havas for Guinean President Alpha Conde and Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe.
In 2016, police searched the Bollore Group’s headquarters in the Paris suburb of Puteaux.
Months after he became Guinea’s first freely elected president, Conde summarily terminated the contract of Conakry’s port operator, a subsidiary of French shipping company NCT Necotrans, and gave it to rival Bollore.
“Soon after he took power, [Conde] made a decision that surprised many. The management of the port was immediately given to his friend Vincent Bollore, without any kind of trial,” opposition leader and former Guinean prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo said.
“It is due to the ongoing inquiry in France that Guineans discover the true motive of this unjust and illegal move taken by Alpha Conde in the wake of his taking power,” he added.
A French court in 2013 ordered the Bollore Group to pay Necotrans a total of 2 million euros (US$2.44 million at the current exchange rate) in compensation, but shortly afterward, Bollore took over the company.
Dorent also worked on the communications strategy of Gnassingbe, who succeeded his father Gnassingbe Eyadema upon his death in 2005. After Faure Gnassingbe’s re-election to a second term in 2010, the Bollore Group won the 35-year Lome port contract — a decision also challenged by a rival.
Denying any wrongdoing, the Bollore Group said it had obtained the Togo concession in 2001, before it took over Havas, and that it secured the Guinea contract before Conde’s election, following the “failure” of its rival.
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