French industrialist billionaire and Senator Serge Dassault was detained Wednesday for alleged vote-buying in his former fiefdom south of Paris. He faces renewed questioning Thursday after having been released for the night.
The 88-year-old manufacturer of fighter jets is suspected of buying votes in Corbeil-Essonnes, where he was mayor from 1995 to 2009.
Dassault is ranked by Forbes magazine as the fourth-richest man in France and the 69th-richest in the world, with an estimated fortune of 13 billion euros ($18 billion).
French judges suspect him of operating an extensive system of vote-buying which influenced the outcome of three mayoral elections in the Paris-area suburb of Corbeil in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Those votes were won either by Dassault or his successor and associate, Jean-Pierre Bechter.
Formal charges against Dassault now look inevitable, experts say.
Allegations of bribing immigrants
Bechter has already been charged, as has Cristela de Oliveira, a former official in the mayor’s office suspected of giving council flats to families in exchange for supporting Dassault or Bechter.
Dassault heads the Dassault Group, which owns the country’s main conservative daily newspaper, Le Figaro, and holds a majority stake in Dassault Aviation, which makes business and military aircraft (including the Rafale fighter jet).
A member of former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, Dassault admits using his vast personal wealth to help residents of Corbeil, but denies any payouts were made in return for votes.
But at least two men who claim to have been paid by Dassault to help organise the alleged vote buying have described an efficient electoral machine which targeted poorer families from immigrant backgrounds.
In return for casting their ballots for Dassault or Bechter, residents were promised help with paying for driving lessons and finding subsidised housing.
In addition to vote-buying, Dassault could be charged with money laundering and misuse of public assets. Those charges are serious enough to warrant prison time.
In 1998, Dassault received a two-year suspended prison sentence in Belgium for bribing members of the country’s Socialist Party in order to secure an army helicopter contract in what became known as the “Agusta scandal”.
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