Swiss prosecutors demand jail time for Israeli tycoon convicted of corruption
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Swiss prosecutors demanded Monday {that a} French-Israeli businessman serve his jail sentence in an enormous corruption case involving Guinea mining rights, whereas his protection insisted he was harmless.
In an impassioned closing assertion, chief prosecutor Yves Bertossa informed the Geneva appeals court docket that he maintained his request for Beny Steinmetz to serve 5 years behind bars, decrying his position in a “pact of corruption.”
The 66-year-old mining tycoon, who made his fortune in diamonds, had already been sentenced by a decrease court docket in January 2021 to a five-year jail time period and ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs ($52 million) in compensation.
He was discovered responsible of organising a posh monetary internet to pay bribes to make sure his firm might get hold of permits in Guinea’s southeastern Simandou area, which is estimated to include the world’s largest untapped iron ore deposits.
Earlier Monday, Steinmetz’s lawyer Daniel Kinzer slammed the prosecution’s case as “very weak,” insisting the decrease court docket had reached “an faulty and unjust conclusion.”
“He’s harmless… There isn’t a legal offense,” he stated in his closing assertion, urging the judges to take a look at the information “with contemporary eyes.”
Geneva’s courthouse on the opening of Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz’s enchantment towards a corruption sentence linked to mining rights in Guinea, August 29, 2022. (Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP)
He lamented that his shopper had been blamed for actions by a spread of various actors related to completely different entities, insisting he had solely been serving as a advisor to the Beny Steinmetz Group Sources (BSGR).
‘Good story’
Bertossa doubled down on the image he painted in the course of the unique trial of Steinmetz main the cost to bribe a spouse of then-Guinean president Lansana Conte and others with a purpose to win profitable mining rights in Simandou.
“Everybody thought of him the boss,” he stated.
The prosecution says Steinmetz obtained the rights shortly earlier than Conte died in 2008 after about $10 million was paid in bribes over a lot of years.
Conte ordered international mining big Rio Tinto to relinquish two concessions that have been subsequently obtained by BSGR towards an funding of $160 million.
Simply 18 months later, BSGR bought 51 p.c of its stake within the concession to Brazilian mining big Vale for $2.5 billion.
However in 2013, Guinea’s first democratically-elected president Alpha Conde launched a assessment of permits allotted underneath Conte and stripped the VBG consortium, fashioned by BSGR and Vale, of its allow.
Illustrative: Guinean President Alpha Conde delivers a speech on August 15, 2019, throughout a ceremony marking the seventy fifth anniversary of the WWII Allied landings in Provence, in Saint-Raphael, southern France. (Eric Gaillard/Pool Picture by way of AP)
The protection maintains there was nothing inappropriate about how BSGR obtained the permits, and that Rio Tinto misplaced half the concessions for failing to develop them.
It insisted BSGR was desperate to put money into Guinea and that the mission would have been massively helpful to the nation and would have partnered in its growth.
‘Pact of corruption’
However Bertossa stated the sale to Vale as an alternative confirmed it was solely serious about “collaborating within the income.”
And he rejected efforts to distance Steinmetz from an alleged “pact of corruption” with Conte and his fourth spouse Mamadie Toure to acquire the exploration rights.
Toure, who has admitted to having acquired funds, has protected standing in america as a state witness.
Kinzer insisted Steinmetz was not concerned in any funds and prompt the funds that have been made ought to, if something, be thought of as an effort at lobbying or affect peddling, which isn’t unlawful in Guinea or in Switzerland.
He additionally stated a lot of the funds have been made after Conte died and Toure had left the nation, which means they might not have been made with corrupt intentions.
“Let’s be critical,” Bertossa stated, pointing to quite a few wiretaps of an affiliate of Steinmetz who can be interesting an earlier verdict that pointed to funds at Steinmetz’s behest.
“The one purpose was to affect the president to acquire the mining rights.”
