The Paris Court of Appeal will issue its decision on April 11 on appeals filed by two French defense groups in the investigation into alleged bribes paid in connection with the sale of submarines to Malaysia in 2002, AFP learned Tuesday from a source. judicial.
The investigative chamber addressed, during a hearing on Tuesday, various annulment appeals filed by Thales, its subsidiaries and DCNI that questioned in particular the validity of the searches carried out as part of this investigation.
After a first hearing on April 19, 2022, the Court of Appeals had postponed its decision for several months, requesting additional information aimed at clarifying certain contentious points in the investigation.
According to elements known to the AFP, the Public Ministry requested in writing confirmation of the proceeding after having read the new documents presented to the investigation.
“bribes”
At the center of this ten-year instruction, consultancy contracts were concluded on the sidelines of the sale to Malaysia in 2002 of two Scorpene submarines and one Agosta submarine by DCNI, allied with Thales, for almost one billion euros.
French justice suspects that some of these contracts have been used as fronts to pay bribes to then Malaysian Defense Minister Najib Razak to make him opt for the French offer.
One of these contracts provided for the payment by DCNI of 30 million euros to the subsidiary Thales international Asia (Thint Asia), as commercial export costs (FCE). Thint Asia paid a comparable sum to another company, Terasasi, suspected by the courts of being an empty shell whose main shareholder was a close friend of Najib Razak, Abdul Razak Baginda, for consulting activities with disputed reality.
The Thales group, several of its subsidiaries, as well as DCNI, were in turn charged in this case between September 2020 and January 2022. They dispute any infringement. Several other people, including former heads of DCNI or Thales International Asia, are also implicated. The financial investigation judge Aude Buresi closed the investigations in January 2022.
Source: BFM TV
