TOur player, trainer, commentator, sandwich man, secretary of state, businessman, sports leader: Bernard Laporte has always had a busy schedule. But one year before the Rugby World Cup, scheduled in France, this is an appointment that would have gone well. The president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR) must appear before the Paris Criminal Court, from September 7 to 22, for a case of favoritism.
Referred to justice for, among other things, illegal taking of interests, passive influence peddling, passive corruption and abuse of corporate assets, he will be able to explain his links with his friend – and co-defendant – Mohed Altrad, boss in the Construction and wealthy owner of the Montpellier club.
Juicy image contract
The police officers of the economic crime repression brigade suspect the strong man of French rugby of having used his influence so that the company of Mohed Altrad becomes, in 2018, the sponsor of the jersey of the XV of France. And to have put pressure, at the end of 2017, on the president of the appeal committee of the FFR to reduce sanctions against the Montpellier club. All while Bernard Laporte was bound by a lucrative image contract, long remained secret, with the businessman – he has since renounced it. A “essentially dependent intellectual construction”denounces the Laporte camp.
For a quarter of a century, the man with the round glasses has attracted media attention. However, his first professional life, as a scrum half, in Gaillac then in Bordeaux-Bègles, with a title of champion of France in 1991, took place in relative anonymity. A sporting career that went unnoticed in The world, which does not devote a single line to it. Bernard Laporte had already retired from playing when his name appeared in our columns on May 3, 1997. Journalist Pascal Ceaux describes the resurrection of Stade Français-CASG, back in the elite of Ovalie after decades of purgatory. While the club “wants to become a big name in rugby again”, his trainer, Bernard Laporte, “plans to (…) add a physical trainer and a dietitian to lead the two daily training sessions”.
The following year, the Parisian club, reinforced by a flashy and cosmopolitan recruitment, is crowned. “From a team without past and without terroir, wrote Eric Collier on May 19, 1998, a young trainer wearing intellectual glasses, Bernard Laporte, has made a French champion in the game as implacable as it is jubilant, an illustration of the interbreeding and the inevitable professionalization of the oval world. »
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