BNP Paribas leadership must come to Malta for questioning, court rules
BNP Paribas’ CEO and Chairman have been ordered to appear before a Maltese court, where they face questions about its alleged involvement with a highly controversial deal in Malta, and about serious alleged ethical, legal and professional violations at the French bank.
Jean-Laurent Bonnafé and Jean Lemierre, two of France’s highestprofile executives, will be pressed to give evidence as witnesses in court concerning their roles in an alleged plot by BNP Paribas to discredit a financier of British-Israeli background who had criticized the bank over its admitted involvement in multiple criminal activities, including money-laundering for pariah regimes.
Jacob Agam, alongside Maltabased
Vertical Group, the international private equity group he chairs, is bringing a civil lawsuit against both men and BNP itself for what he alleges was the bank’s deliberate and unlawful destruction of the business’s assets.
BNP and the executives dispute the claim.
Agam alleges he was targeted by the bank after raising concerns publicly and privately about its role in a number of controversies. These included a 2014 criminal conviction imposed on BNP by the US Government for unlawfully processing transactions worth billions of dollars for sanctioned regimes linked to terrorism and genocide.
In an unusual development for a front-ranking French company, Bonnafé and Lemierre were summoned to give witness evidence at a hearing next week, after Vertical secured a court summons against them.
Bailiffs served the summons on them at the €41bn bank’s Paris headquarters in September. It is one of the first times since the Global Financial Crisis that a major bank’s top executives, rather than lower-ranking officials, will be obliged to give public witness-box evidence in civil proceedings.
The legal action brought by Vertical and Agam makes pathfinding use of a 2012 European Union Directive, which enables a resident or company of one EU member state to use its home court to sue defendants elsewhere in the EU.
Bonnafé and Lemierre have been informed by the court that they will be in contempt of court if they disobey the summons and fail to appear before Joseph Zammit McKeon, the presiding judge, at the Courts of Justice Building in Valletta, on November 3.
BNP has previously argued the case should not be heard in Malta, and has claimed it has no business there. Bonnafé and Lemierre will be questioned closely on this claim, which appears to contrast with recent reports identifying BNP as part of a financing syndicate for Electrogas, a power station company dogged by extreme controversy in Malta.
The company’s former director Yorgen Fenech has been charged with conspiracy to murder Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist assassinated in 2017, which he denies.
There is no suggestion of any link between
Caruana Galizia’s death and BNP. A connection between BNP and Electrogas was first asserted in court testimony provided by Agam at an earlier hearing in February 2020.
In a separate complaint, France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office has been asked to investigate BNP’s deal with Electrogas by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, an anti-corruption NGO named after the murdered reporter. She was killed after investigating business practices at Electrogas and elsewhere.
Bonnafé and Lemierre will also face calls to give evidence about their alleged personal involvement in decisions made within BNP that allegedly caused the unwarranted destruction of Agam’s and Vertical’s business interests.
The defendants are accused of retaliating with a smear campaign against Agam and Vertical Group, in breach of defamation and banking laws. Agam, who is of British-Israeli background with a Jewish heritage, and had been a longstanding client of BNP, claims the bank abruptly terminated his companies’ investment facilities, sought to seize his family’s properties, and defamed him in the media, with the knowledge of the CEO and Chairman.
The bank’s legal representative also used antisemitic and derogatory language, calling Jews “parasites”, according to the lawsuit. Agam claims the bank’s leadership failed to take any action to investigate, mitigate or apologise for this and other alleged episodes, despite repeated requests to do so, and accuses them of presiding over anti-semitic practices.
Agam and Vertical claim the alleged campaign against his interests started after he raised concerns with BNP following a number of major public scandals involving the bank. In 2014, BNP pleaded guilty to two criminal charges and agreed to pay almost $9 billion to resolve accusations it violated US sanctions aimed at thwarting brutal regimes in Iran, Sudan and elsewhere.
The bank and the other defendants reject the allegations brought in the lawsuit by Agam and Vertical. They deny the existence of a plot against the claimants and say the claims of antisemitism are conjectures by the claimants which are denied.
Jacob Agam said: “I hope these hearings will bring to an end the bank’s lengthy efforts to shield itself and its management from questions they will deservedly find very unpleasant and difficult. Dealing with BNP has been a far more unpleasant and difficult experience for me, my family and my business.
“For the first time, the CEO and Chairman will be put under the spotlight, required to explain BNP’s controversial involvement in Malta, and to justify its previous claim that it did no business there. Its business in Malta is nothing to be proud of, to judge from its partnership with Electrogas.“I also want them to face searching questions about their alleged personal involvement in the destruction of my family assets.”
Dr Pio Valletta of Farrugia, Gatt & Falzon, Maltese attorney for Mr Agam and Vertical Holdings, added: “This is an important testcase regarding the applicability of European Union rules. It demonstrates that nobody can escape from their statutory duties, not even a mighty organisation like BNP and its management. The recent ruling of the Maltese Court reaffirms the fundamental principle that ‘be you ever so high, the law is above you’. Messrs Bonnafé and Lemierre may preside over the world’s eighth-largest bank. But they and the bank must still submit to a serious examination of their actions before the court.”