Franco-Israeli tycoon Benny Steinmetz wants to be acquitted in an appeals court that began in Geneva on Monday after he was convicted of corruption in a case involving mining rights in Guinea, AFP reported.

Flanked by two new defense lawyers, a smiling Benny Steinmetz appeared Monday morning to appeal his January 2021 sentence at the Geneva Criminal Court.

He was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs (€52 million) in damages for “corruption of public officials” in Guinea.

Since then, Steinmetz, 66, who maintained his innocence throughout the first trial, has reorganized his legal team.

“We expect the court to recognize that Benny Steinmetz did not bribe anyone,” his lawyer Daniel Kinzer told AFP before the start of the trial.

“Mistakes, mistakes, misunderstandings”

On Monday, the attorney laid out a long list of mistakes, errors and misunderstandings that he said undermine the prosecution’s case.

But the prosecutor’s office did not appreciate the accusations of “buying” the testimony of one of the main figures in this case, Mamady Toure, the fourth wife of the former president of Guinea, Lansan Conte, who made a deal with American justice.

“We will stop at nothing to try to find a procedural loophole,” said Yves Bertossa, the first prosecutor, saying the case rested on many elements and that the idea of ​​bought testimony was ludicrous.

The trial was the culmination of a long international investigation launched in 2013 into mining licenses granted in Guinea to Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR), in which Steinmetz was an adviser.

According to Steinmetz’s team, BSGR legally obtained the mining rights and sought, under difficult and difficult circumstances, to begin mining that could benefit Guinea’s national interests.

Prosecutors in Geneva accuse him of setting up a financial deal through front companies to pay bribes worth about $10 million to Mamadi Toure so that BSGR could obtain mining rights in Guinea.

BSGR acquired the exploration rights to blocks 1 and 2 of one of the world’s largest iron ore deposits at Simandu in 2008, shortly before the death of Lansana Conté, where it invested approximately $160 million.

In 2010, BSGR sold 51% of its shares to the Brazilian company Vale for $2.5 billion.

“Corruption Pact”

According to Geneva prosecutors, Benny Steinmetz promised bribes, some of which were allegedly transferred through Swiss accounts, to Mamadi Toure in 2005 and then paid or caused the payment between 2006 and 2012 to have BSGR replace Anglo-Australian group Rio Tinto. 1 and 2 mines.

Elected in 2010, President Alfa Condé reviewed all mining permits granted by his predecessor, revoking BSGR’s rights in 2014.

According to the prosecutor’s office in Geneva, there was a “corruption agreement” between Steinmetz, his representatives in Guinea, former president Conte and Mamadi Toure.

Toure claimed to have received the payments. She failed to appear at the 2021 trial as requested by the defense, and Kinzer protested Monday that the prosecution is relying so heavily on the testimony of Toure, whom she has never been able to interview. He requested that these testimonies be invalidated in their entirety.

Benny Steinmetz, who was living in Geneva at the time of the alleged incidents, said he “never” asked anyone to pay Ms Toure money.

Who is Benny Steinmetz?

In December 2020, Israeli tycoon Benjamin Steinmetz (age 65) was finally sentenced in absentia by the Supreme Court to 5 years in prison with execution in the case of the illegal return of the Royal Farm from Benyasa and Snagov forest. Then the Romanian police started an international investigation.

In January 2021, seven years after the investigation began, a Swiss court sentenced 64-year-old Benny Steinmetz to five years in prison for corruption of public officials in Guinea in a mining license case. He was also ordered to pay compensatory payments (a form of compensation) of 50 million Swiss francs (46 million) to the Swiss state. However, the decision is not final.

The non-governmental organization Public Eye, which in 2013 published a highly complex organizational chart of Benny Steinmetz’s group, said the file was “a symbol of predatory practices in the mining sector” and was “a real dive into the mechanisms of international corruption, with Guinea as a backdrop, one of the poorest countries of the world”.

A Geneva court heard allegations that $10 million (8.2 million euros) in bribes were paid through Swiss accounts to senior officials in Guinea to grant the Benny Steinmetz Group (BSGR) mining rights in the south of the very poor West African country. despite the abundance of natural resources.

Benny Steinmetz made his fortune in the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, between 1970 and 1997 before returning to Israel, where he founded the BSGR Group, which focused on natural resources and real estate investments.

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