NGOs Try to Recover Funds from Bolloré Logistics Sale, Alleging Corruption
France's Bolloré Group has been dogged by allegations of corruption in its African ports division for more than a decade, and even the unit's sale in 2022 has not stopped the controversy. A collective of 11 NGOs from West Africa have filed a complaint with the French National Financial Prosecutor's Office, demanding that Bolloré pay restitution for alleged corrupt practices that secured allegedly noncompetitive concession terms for the company's port operations.
Bolloré Africa Logistics - now known as AGL - got its start in the 1920s and grew into a ports empire across West and Central Africa. Bolloré Group sold the division to MSC for $6 billion in late 2022, and MSC retained the unit's separate identity and kept its longtime president at the helm. At the time of the sale, Bolloré had built up a presence in 47 countries with 16 container terminals, seven ro/ro terminals and two wood terminals, and it had 21,000 employees across the continent.
Along the way, Bolloré Group racked up complaints for allegedly corrupt dealings in West Africa. In 2018, French authorities put then-president Vincent Bolloré under investigation for allegedly using his media empire to help the election campaigns of leaders of Guinea and Togo, providing them with advertising at below-market rates in 2010. These politicians later granted lucrative container terminal concessions to Bolloré Logistics at Conakry, Guinea and Lome, Togo, respectively. Bolloré Group settled the matter with French authorities in a 2021 plea agreement and paid a fine.
On Wednesday, a coalition of African NGOs from Togo, Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon accused Vincent Bolloré, his son Cyrille Bolloré, and Bolloré Group of securing the right to operate ports in the region illegally, then later profiting from these arrangements by selling the business to MSC. The accusations relate to the Togo and Guinea cases, but also to activities at Tema, Ghana; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and Douala and Kribi, Cameroon. The coalition - “Restitution for Africa” (RAF) - accused Bolloré of money laundering and fraud, and called for a full criminal prosecution.
"The continued ownership and operation of these assets until 2022 constitutes the offense of receiving stolen goods, which punishes the possession, use, or profit derived from fraudulent property," RAF argued in its complaint.
RAF hopes to leverage a recently-enacted French law that allows the assets recovered from foreign corruption investigations to be returned to the countries affected, for use in economic development projects.