French billionaire Vincent Bolloré is set to face trial on corruption and embezzlement charges related to election campaigns in Togo and Guinea in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the French financial prosecutor’s spokesperson has said.
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Media, transport and energy tycoon Bolloré is suspected of having bribed foreign officials in the Paris suburb of Puteaux during the election campaign of presidents Faure Gnassingbe in Togo and Alpha Conde in Guinea, in what has come to be known as the “African Ports” affair, the spokesperson said on Thursday.
Bolloré was placed under formal investigation in 2018 over allegations his company undercharged for work on behalf of presidential candidates in Guinea and Togo in return for port contracts.
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The Bolloré Group, which is controlled and run by the billionaire’s family, used to own logistics assets in Africa but sold them to shipping company MSC Group in 2022.
In March 2025, a collective of African NGOs from Togo, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo filed a complaint to the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office accusing the conglomerate of systematically using corrupt practices to secure lucrative port concessions in at least five African nations, before selling its African logistics operations for €5.7 billion in 2022 to Swiss-Italian shipping giant MSC.
Bolloré and his family also own significant stakes in listed companies including Vivendi and Havas. He also controls more than a quarter of French media, including controversial news channel CNews and far-right weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
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‘Fair trial impossible’
Bolloré’s lawyers Céline Astolfe and Olivier Baratelli said in a statement it will be “impossible to hold a fair trial”. They also announced they would appeal against the judges’ ruling “on procedural grounds”.
“We strongly reaffirm that the transactions that took place more than 15 years ago between the Bolloré and Havas groups, of which Bolloré was unaware, involving €300,000 paid by cheque and duly recorded in the accounts, were part of the normal course of business relations between these two groups,” they said.
There are two further co-defendants in the corruption cases – Gilles Alix, a former board member at Vivendi, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, who is currently head of Havas International Consulting.
(with newswires)
