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Paris Appeal Court Suspends Jail Term for Stéphane Richard in Tapie Arbitration Case

It serves as the final judicial step in a scandal that has seen the CDR reclaim roughly a third of the disputed funds.

Stéphane Richard à Paris, le 19 mai 2022.
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Stéphane Richard, ancien PDG d’Orange, a été condamné à six mois de prison avec sursis lundi 30 juin 2025 dans l’affaire de l’arbitrage entre Bernard Tapie et le Crédit lyonnais.
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Overview

  • On June 30 the Paris Court of Appeal handed Richard a six-month suspended sentence and a €15,000 fine for complicity in embezzlement of public funds.
  • The ruling completes a retrial ordered by the Court of Cassation in June 2023 after it voided his original 2021 conviction of one year suspended and a €50,000 fine.
  • Richard was director of cabinet to Economy Minister Christine Lagarde when a 2008 arbitration granted Bernard Tapie over €400 million against Crédit Lyonnais, later annulled for fraud.
  • The Consortium de Réalisation reported recovering €246 million of the roughly €700 million debt linked to the annulled arbitration as of June 2025.
  • The decision marks the concluding chapter of a long-running legal saga that highlighted tensions between private arbitration and public accountability in France.