Can you win an election just ten days after spending the whole night in custody? Bernard Laporte will soon know the answer, as will the entire Ovalie, some 1,900 clubs across the country. On Friday 2 and Saturday 3 October, their leaders are called to elect the president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR). Two choices are possible, and two philosophies, as the dissensions arise: either to renew Mr. Laporte, the outgoing one, for a second mandate of four years; or prefer him Florian Grill, head of the Ile-de-France League until now.
Very tense, the ballot takes place in an unprecedented context. Not only because of Covid-19, which forces electronic voting. Bernard Laporte comes out of a long hearing in Paris, from Tuesday 22 to Wednesday 23 September, in the premises of the brigade for the repression of economic delinquency (BRDE). Even free, he now awaits the conclusions of the preliminary investigation opened by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), for trading in influence and illegal taking of interest, motivated, three years earlier, by suspicion of favoritism towards the billionaire Mohed Altrad. The latter being both boss of the Montpellier club and sponsor of the XV of France.
“I regret that Bernard Laporte prefers aggression in the back to the courage of face to face debate, calm and argued”, Florian Grill, September 24
From there to keep a low profile, certainly not! President-candidate Laporte chose attack for defense. “We will never have gone so far to try to discourage me”, he believes, in a final message posted on his Facebook and Twitter accounts on September 28. Behind this indefinite “one”, the number one of the federation cries out for a general conspiracy which his opponents would like to take advantage of, with those on the Grill list in the lead. “An attempted coup”, delivers another text, signed in advance and sent by his entourage from the first hours of his custody.
Bernard Laporte first chose to attack… the prosecution. He accuses him of a “Revolting method”. More precisely, “A conjunction of calendars” judicial and electoral, despite his requests to postpone the hearing. This is to forget that justice has its own tempo, outside all federal considerations: without the confinement due to Covid-19, a first summons had provided for the interrogation to be carried out at the beginning of April, according to our information.
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