Jean Bonnefont, 98 years old (WELL 98 years old) and former director of the former Charbonnages de France, is being sued along with four other business leaders for having distorted between 1999 and 2003 the allocation of the lucrative heating and air conditioning market of the first European business district, estimated at several hundred million euros.
Mr. Bonnefont, one of the oldest defendants in France, "will absolutely not be able to come, even half a day, to be heard as was his wish?", Worried the president of the 15th correctional chamber at the start of the hearing.
"Unless you come with a medical vehicle", replied his lawyer, Me Olivier Baratelli, "unfortunately, time will have done its work against him".
In addition to Jean Bonnefont, the former number 3 of the Compagnie Générale des Eaux-Vivendi Bernard Forterre, 82 years old today, and the businessman Antoine Benetti, 68 years old, are also implicated.
Bernard Forterre was present Monday morning at the hearing, advancing to the bar with a cane. His council Jean-Didier Belot specified that he could attend certain sessions only. Antoine Benetti, also present, said he wanted to attend the entire trial.
The defense pleaded in the preamble the nullity of the procedure for "violation of the right to be tried within a reasonable time".
"It is 10 am, I have a mask, I am not going to cry out, but I should have started with a cry", declared Me Belot. “Since when has a man almost a hundred years old been referred to a criminal court?” He said indignantly.
The affair began in 1998, when the Mixed Syndicate of District Heating of La Défense (Sicudef) launched the renewal of the market held for thirty years by Climadef, a subsidiary of Charbonnages de France.
Three years later, he attributed it to a group of companies called Enertherm. But the fraud repression services spot anomalies in the process, which in 2002 led to the opening of "corruption" and "influence peddling" investigations then "abuse of corporate assets".
The Bonnefont-Forterre-Benetti trio is accused of having distorted the market to ensure its allocation to Enertherm, whose shareholders were in fact the same as those of Climadef, the former concessionaire.
At the center of the alleged cartel was Charles Ceccaldi-Raynaud, the "omnipotent" president of Sicudef according to testimony at the time, indicted for having received a commission of 5 million francs (770.000 euros).
The former senator-mayor of Puteaux died in July 2019 at the age of 94, before the prosecution took its requisitions.