I hold this trial to be impossible, and yet it is taking place. Mamadie Touré, who would be the corrupt one, is not sitting there. But there is Beny Steinmetz, who would be the corrupter. What consistency is there? “. So begins this Monday morning, 6e day of the trial of Franco-Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz in Geneva, the plea of his lawyer Marc Bonnant. In the viewfinder of this “preliminary” remark, Mamadie Touré, the 4e wife of former Guinean President Lansana Conté. According to the prosecution, she received $ 8.5 million in bribes between 2006 and 2012, to allow subsidiaries of the mining company Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) to launch an assault on the ore of iron. And not just any one: that of the Simandou megagization in Guinea. With an exceptional iron content (more than 65%), 2.7 billion tons of reserves according to the Anglo-Australian group Rio Tinto, which obtained the first mining exploration permits in 1997, it promises 30 to 40 years potential exploitation.
“Shouting” absences
Was a corruptive pact therefore concluded with a view to granting half of this treasure to BSGR? Confronting Mamadie Touré would certainly have been enlightening. Only, regrets the Geneva council, she is absent, both as a defendant and as a witness. Summoned by the court, she did not appear – neither did the ten other witnesses. The defense then called for a postponement of the trial, to no avail. “You considered that there was no need to dismiss even though these absences were glaring. But they scream. How to take a decision when the witnesses are not heard in contradictory? “Asks the tenor of the bar, standing, finger raised, facing the president of the criminal court Alexandra Banna. Sitting to his left, Beny Steinmetz, 64, mask and navy blue suit, looks up to follow the first plea of his three counsels, after the prosecution requested five years in prison against him.
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Accused of “bribery of foreign public officials” and “forgery of titles”, according to Swiss investigators, Steinmetz in particular “promised in 2005 and granted undue advantages to Lansana Conté” and Mamadie Touré in 2006 to obtain permits mining, and in particular on blocks 1 and 2 of Simandou. “I am going to ask for the prescription because the facts would have taken place 16 years ago”, warns Me Bonnant. The limitation period for bribery of foreign public officials is 15 years in Switzerland. And according to him, the prosecution could not provide proof of the presence of Beny Steinmetz in Guinea in 2005, and a fortiori, of a possible meeting with the former General Conté.
“Beny Steinmetz has no power”
Among the three BSGR subsidiaries or sub-subsidiaries active in Guinea, BSGR Guinea BVI is the first to have been created. It was registered in the British Virgin Islands on October 28, 2005. But from there to establishing a link with Beny Steinmetz… In the empire that bears his name, Beny Steinmetz Group, its multitude of affiliated entities, or its mining branch (BSGR ) present since the end of the 90s mainly in Africa and in the former Soviet republics, the Franco-Israeli recalled, during his audience of January 12, to be only “advisor”, “ambassador”.
“A marvelous adviser”, “of great intelligence”, endowed with “knowledge of figures”, abounds his lawyer. Steinmetz therefore does not exercise any mandate, neither executive, nor as shareholder or director, in the myriad of companies of the group. “Who is Beny Steinmetz? He is not Balda [propriétaire ultime de BSG, NDLR.], a foundation under Liechtenstein law that I chair, supported Me Bonnant. He is only the beneficiary of this foundation and receives emoluments when I please, he has no power. “And to assent:” No BSGR auxiliary was in Guinea in 2005 to the knowledge of Beny Steinmetz. Your court would have to decide who the representative was, and since when. ”
Mamadie Touré, the “FBI witness”
However, her private jet would have been seen on the tarmac at Conakry airport on February 20, 2006. Moreover, Mamadie Touré does not say, in a certificate of December 2, 2013, that “after the granting of exploration permits on Simandou Sud and Simandou Nord ”(undoubtedly in reference to the mining permits issued by the Guinean Ministry of Mines on February 6, 2006, Editor’s note), he was informed that“ Beny Steinmetz will be coming shortly with the silver ” ? She adds that he would have offered her in person, on this occasion, 5% of the turnover of the future Simandou project if it helped BSGR to obtain the rights to exploit blocks 1 and 2, then in the process of being awarded. at Rio Tinto.
“We heard that a ‘private plane’ had been seen in Conakry. All private planes do not belong to Beny Steinmetz, ”sweeps lawyer Marc Bonnant. His client, he maintains, only went to Conakry in 2008. As for the words of the “crown witness” Mamadie Touré, he rejects it from the start: “He is a corrupt witness. The FBI bartered or attempted to barter his testimony in return for his immunity in the United States, and the very partial confiscation of his assets. ”An allusion to the status of“ cooperating witness ”accepted by Mamadie Touré, to escape criminal prosecution in the United States, where she resides.
The notion of foreign public official
It is the turn of the lawyer Camilla Haab, collaborator of Me Bonnant, to dismantle her status, this time, of “foreign public official”. First, argues the defense, nothing proves that Mamadie Touré was indeed Lansana Conté’s wife, and not his mistress. Did she have a diplomatic passport? It was not issued to him until 2007, seven years after his supposed marriage to the head of state. The presence of the red berets of the presidential guard during his travels? For the “social reception” organized by BSGR in Conakry in September 2006, they would have accompanied the Minister of Mines and not Mamadie Touré. Was it influencing President Conté’s decisions? “It emerges rather from the testimony of Minister Souaré [ministre des Mines entre 2005 et 2006, NDLR] that Lansana Conté had once said to Mamadie Touré: “I only know about oil what I put in my car. You don’t mean that. You leave here. ” », She quotes.
Note that Ahmed Tidiane Souaré also testifies to the presence of Mamadie Touré at each meeting dedicated to BSGR in her ministry, “as if to say ‘the president said'”. But Me Haab continues his demonstration. Of the twelve affidavits of Guinean ministers on file, at least half of them say they do not know her or doubt her influence over President Conté. Finally, among the eleven payments of bribes to Mamadie Touré that traces the indictment, “ten were made after the death of Lansana Conté in 2008”, she notes.
BSGR, Rio Tinto and miners in Africa
Filigree is also replayed in the enclosure of room 3 of the Geneva Criminal Court, almost deserted and icy, the competition between Rio Tinto and BSGR in Guinea. “By what a miracle, and without the chef’s decision, we attack Rio Tinto and we get it thanks to Frédéric Cilins [l’un des trois prévenus de ce procès, NDLR] ? », Had launched in his indictment the prosecutor Bertossa, at 4e day of trial. And to oppose BSGR to the Anglo-Australian mining company, “largest group in the world”, weighing “80 billion dollars of assets” and endowed with “experience”. But in 2005, “we employ 10,000 people,” proclaims Me Bonnant in return. People of high caliber, who have enabled the group to make wonderful profits, not by exploiting the poor and damned of the earth, but in real estate, management, mining. (…) And Beny Steinmetz is not an operator of Africa, he is a pro-African ”.
Rio Tinto, had recalled Friday in his pleading Me Jean-Marc Carnicé, the lawyer of the French Frédéric Cilins, it is also “accusations of racial discrimination against black workers, of complicity in war crimes and crimes against the humanity ”. A reference to a complaint relating to the exploitation, in the past, of a copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea. But this argument was part of another logic: to tell another story, than that of the intermediary supposed in the corruptive scheme put in place.
The other scenario
In this case, it is a company, Pentler Holdings, registered in the British Virgin Islands on October 28, 2005 (the same day as BSGR Guinea BVI), then sold in February 2006 to the trio of businessmen Frédéric Cilins, Michael Noy and Abraham Lev Ran. A shell company, according to the indictment, which gave the “appearance of cooperation (of BSGR) with independent third parties in order to justify the payment of funds”. Pentler becomes a 17.65% shareholder of BSGR Guinea, before its shares were bought in 2008 by another subsidiary of the mining group, BSGR Steels, for a total of 34 million euros.
But according to Jean-Marc Carnicé, “Cilins l’Africain”, specialized in the import-export of consumer goods on the continent since the beginning of the 2000s, was not in service ordered by BSGR to delight Rio Tinto blocks 1 and 2 of Simandou.
In Guinea, where he explored various opportunities from 2005, he quickly identified Simandou’s potential. And realizes that Rio Tinto does not have a good press. Remember that at that time, some are already wondering in Conakry if the mining giant is not trying to “freeze” the iron deposit, without exploiting it. Cilins, whose partner Michaël Noy met BSGR’s director of operations in South Africa, “grasped the frustrations”, said to himself that we had to “stand out from Rio Tinto” and “set up a win-win cooperation with the State ”according to Me Carnicé. “But he did not seek to corrupt,” he assures us. Its added value is its knowledge of the field. »And to retrace his path: form a team of« local partners », accumulate meetings at the Ministry of Mines, then meet, of course, President Lansana Conté. But the intermediary would be his first wife Henriette Conté, recently deceased, and not Mamadie Touré. Nothing to do, therefore, according to the Geneva lawyer, with the scenario of prosecutor Mascotto – who investigated the case for six years – worthy of a “bad movie”.
The “trial of neocolonialism”
The lawyers of the three parties did not fail to denounce the flaws in this international investigation. Mascotto was particularly scratched by Me Bonnant. “This instruction was calamitous and sullied by the behavior of a man, the red judge,” he summed up. The parties finally called on the three magistrates responsible for deliberating to beware of the temptation of a symbolic trial. “The press is talking about a historic event,” noted in her plea Corinne Corminboeuf Harari, lawyer for the former BSGR administrator Sandra Merloni Horemans. But this is not about the trial of neoliberalism, neocolonialism, or offshore companies. It is not a question of putting history on trial. “” The very harsh indictment of the prosecution mentioned a ‘textbook case of corruption’. So if you acquit or dismiss, it is an urbi et orbi signal to all the corrupters in the world, that they can go. But I do not believe that it is up to you to carry the misfortune of the Guineans on your shoulders, ”added Me Carnicé.
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