At the Apollonia fraud trial, a self-made couple who made millions

With their white hair, elegant looks, and clean records, the Badache couple, now aged 68 and 70, are unusual defendants. On trial since Monday and continuing through June alongside 13 other defendants, including a lawyer and three notaries, they are accused of an organized fraud scheme that defrauded some 760 civil parties, many of them doctors, who thought they were building up their assets at little cost.

When they founded Apollonia in the late 90s, they were in their forties. He had been a merchant, selling shoes in particular, but went bankrupt. She was a beautician. Unemployed, Mr. Badache, from a working-class background and with only a foundry qualification, then branched out into real estate and tax avoidance.

His wife began to support him and they soon wanted to create their own company to do the same thing but with the help of a lawyer, René Spadola.

With this business of selling real estate development lots eligible for the tax-advantaged "professional furnished rental" (LMP) scheme, they're going to make a lot, a lot of money. How much? He pretends not to remember: "Maybe I'll make you all smile. I'd earned the money, so I didn't care."

With a 15% commission taken from each investment made by hundreds of clients lured by promises of huge returns, this will amount to tens of millions of euros. From 1997 to 2009, the Aix-based company sold 5.305 lots for nearly 950 million euros.

A lot of money, then, to "pay a lot of taxes," recalls Jean Badache. Enough to push the couple to move to Switzerland in the mid-2000s.

"Switzerland, it's not because we liked the snow, I'm from the south," but "I was fed up with taxes" and "fed up with having salespeople who lived off their income and collected millions in income without much effort," he says.

In the room, the victims laugh bitterly, some of whom lost everything, up to several million, to buy lots. Apollonia, who managed everything for her clients, took out loans for them from several banks, even going so far as to falsify their bank statements to disguise their growing debt.

SCIs named after dogs and cats

Chalet in Switzerland, residence in Marrakech, the Badache family will store up to 50 real estate properties behind companies named after their various pets: Chipie, Opaline, Sultan, Paco, Balou...

"And isn't Apollonia the name of a cat?" asks the president of the Marseille criminal court, Azanie Julien-Rama.

"It's the name of a Roman road," Viviane Badache replies confidently.

Today, despite the multiple seizures and legal proceedings they face, they still live in a villa with a 6.000 m2 plot of land in Cassis, which keeps Mr. Badache very busy. "I've become the gardener at my house, which isn't uninteresting, but at 70, it's tiring."

As for the facts they are accused of, the two main defendants place the blame squarely on their co-defendants. "I was not sufficiently suspicious and I admit that I perhaps relied a little too much on the employees in whom I had complete trust, the sales representatives and Mr. Spadola," said Viviane Badache.

Jean Badache assures that he only used his skills as a formidable salesman, leaving tax and legal matters to others: "I was like the surgeon, we prepared the body, I did what I had to do and I left," he dared to say, in front of a group of doctors.

Before adding that for him, in this case, "there were two greedy people who met, the one who was selling and the one who was buying."

"Victimization," replied Christophe Jervolino, who represents 195 families, on the sidelines of the hearing. "He knew exactly what he was doing, he was very good at counting at the time, and he managed to put our clients into debt," the lawyer added, interviewed by AFPTV.