It is an extraordinary trial which opens this Monday, January 11 in Geneva. That of the Franco-Israeli magnate Beny Steinmetz, sixty years old with steel blue eyes born in Israel in 1956. For seven years, his case has occupied the police from the United States to Guinea, via Israel. Even the FBI and the CIA were mobilized. Today, the Swiss public prosecutor accuses him of having made pay, via Swiss accounts, large bribes in exchange for mining rights, in particular on the largest untapped iron deposit in the world, Simandou, located in the south of Guinea. The hearing, which is being held before the Geneva Criminal Court, is due to last a week, but the verdict will not be delivered for two weeks.
“The case of the century”
It all dates back to the end of the 2000s, when the Guinean government of former President Lansana Conté, shortly before his death in 2008, deposed the Anglo-Australian group Rio Tinto from the exploitation of one of the most important deposits of iron to the world, in Simandou in Guinea, for the benefit of the company Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR). So far, everything was going well for this son of a diamond cutter, whose father, settled twenty years earlier in Palestine, was one of the pioneers of the gem industry. Heir to the company, Beny Steinmetz has grown the business in natural resources and real estate. Except that in 2010, following his election, the new president Alpha Condé launched a review of all mining permits granted by his predecessor Lansana Conté (1984-2008), notably canceling the rights of BSGR in 2014, after a thorough investigation by relatives of billionaire George Soros.
After years of investigation, the Geneva prosecution suspects that a “corruption pact” would then have been made between Beny Steinmetz, and his representatives in Guinea, and Lansana Conté as well as his fourth wife, Mamadie Touré. The alleged bribes are said to be around ten million dollars (8.2 million euros).
Nicolas Sarkozy as a mediator
But this case could never have been tried. Because an amicable agreement has been found, in particular thanks to a visit by Nicolas Sarkozy to Conakry. The former French head of state, who became a lawyer again, acted as a “facilitator” between Beny Steinmetz and Guinean President Alpha Condé, says Young Africa. And after years of battle, Beny Steinmetz and the new Guinean presidency had reached an agreement in early 2019 that BSGR waive rights to Simandou in exchange for dropping the corruption charges. However, this arrangement did not put an end to the proceedings initiated by the Geneva public prosecutor’s office.
At 64, the businessman and diamond dealer entirely disputes the conclusions of the Geneva public prosecutor’s office, which accuses him of “bribery of foreign public officials and forgery of titles”. “We will plead [son] innocence ”, assured his lawyer, Marc Bonnant, to AFP. In 2013, Beny Steinmetz affirmed, in an interview with a French newspaper, to have invested 170 million dollars in this mine, before reselling 51% in 2010 to the Brazilian group of raw materials Vale for 2.5 billion dollars, almost 30 times more expensive. A transaction described by some media as “break of the century”.
Beny Steinmetz is on trial along with two other defendants, including Frenchman Frédéric Cilins, an external collaborator of BSGR, who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in 2014 in this case, and Sandra Merloni-Horemans, director of the group BSGR in Geneva at the time. “This case is a sad illustration of the curse of natural resources: the fact that a country as rich in raw materials as the Republic of Guinea remains a prisoner of extreme and paradoxical poverty,” said Géraldine Viret, spokesman for the Swiss NGO Public Eye. On the other hand, she said, “the Steinmetz case illustrates the ravages of opacity when groups use it to make gigantic profits on the backs of poor countries.”
The case of Mamadie Touré
Mamady Touré must be heard during the trial as a witness on January 13. “He is the key figure in this case, but it is unlikely that Mamadie Touré will attend the trial in person. She now lives in the United States, where she enjoys the status of a protected witness, ”said Geraldine Viret of Public Eye, who, in 2013, published a very complex organizational chart of BSGR. The defense claims for its part that Beny Steinmetz “never paid a cent to Mr.me Mamadie Touré ”, and ensures that the latter was not the wife of President Conté, but simply a mistress exerting no influence.
The way in which former prosecutor Claudio Mascotte in charge of the case conducted the investigation is also disputed by the defense, who accuses him of having traveled informally to Israel without mentioning him in the file. If a request for recusation of Mr. Mascotto was rejected last year, it is now a duo of prosecutors – Yves Bertossa and Caroline Babel Casutt – who have taken over the case. The three co-defendants face up to ten years in prison.
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