GENEVA – A Swiss court found French-Israeli mining tycoon Beny Steinmetz guilty on Friday on charges of corrupt foreign officials and forging documents in a trial over his successful attempt to pick iron ore in West African Guinea.
Mr. Steinmetz, one of the richest people in Israel, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $ 56.5 million.
The case focused on alleged payments of millions of dollars to a former wife of a former Guinean president, Lansana Conté, who died in 2008. The trial exposed the shady and complex world of trade and competitive competition in the lucrative mining industry. .
His defense attorney, Marc Bonnant, said he would appeal the decision “immediately”. Mr. Bonnant said his client did not “give a single dollar” to a Guinean government official during Conté’s presidency.
Prosecutor Yves Bertossa told reporters he was “satisfied” with the verdict, and the Swiss transparency group Public Eye held a “landmark decision”.
“This conviction of a high-profile business person not only sends a strong signal to the commodity sector as a whole, but also shows the essential need for Switzerland to finally repair the legal loopholes that such predatory practices allow,” he said. .
Mr. Steinmetz, 64, has denied the allegations, dating to the mid-2000s, and alleges that his company, BSG Resources, is a competitor for mining rights on large iron ore deposits in the Simandou region of Guinea.
The Geneva prosecutor’s office claims that Mr. Steinmetz and two other defendants were involved in the corruption of foreign officials and the falsification of documents to conceal bribes from authorities and banks. Some of the funds are allegedly being transferred by Switzerland – and the case has been investigated in Europe, Africa and the United States.
According to the Swiss prosecutor’s office, Steinmetz drafted a treaty of corruption from 2005 with Conté, who ruled the West African government from 1984 until his death, and his fourth wife, Mamadie Touré, involving the payment of nearly $ 10 million. .
The prosecutor’s office said in the court case that between 2006 and 2010 BSG Resources obtained exploration and mining licenses in the Simandou region of Guinea, and that its competitor – the Anglo-Australian mining group Rio Tinto – was deprived of the concessions he had to then in that region.
In 2014, after a review by Democratically elected President Alpha Condé, the Guinean government accused Steinmetz’s company of corruption and paid millions of dollars through a representative to Ms. Touré.
Civil society organizations are pushing for proposals that will add responsibility for businesses headquartered in Switzerland for their actions abroad. One such proposal, which would hold companies in Switzerland liable for human rights violations and environmental damage committed by subsidiaries abroad, failed in a referendum last year.