The Laporte-Altrad case to be heard on appeal in September 2026

The second trial was initially scheduled for December 2025, but was ultimately postponed by more than nine months.

In December 2022, these two French rugby figures were found guilty of having entered into a corruption pact by the Paris Criminal Court.

Bernard Laporte was sentenced to two years in prison and a €75.000 fine for making a series of arbitration decisions in favor of the president of Montpellier (MHR, Top 14) and businessman, after receiving €180.000 from him in March 2017, under a secret image contract that was never executed.

Mohed Altrad, CEO of the construction giant of the same name, received an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a €50.000 fine for "paying Bernard Laporte to obtain his favors in his capacity as president of the FFR."

The vice-president of the FFR, Serge Simon, must also be retried before the Paris Court of Appeal, the national financial prosecutor having appealed his acquittal for illegal taking of interest at first instance.

He is suspected of having asked the then head of French refereeing, Joël Dumé, in 2017 to send a referee to the Montpellier-Racing 92 match and thus have the Parisian club forfeit, having obtained a postponement that Mohed Altrad did not want.