UraMin
[3] Uramin was created by Stephen Dattels and James Mellon, owners of uranium deposits in Africa listed on the London and Toronto markets.
[6] In May 2005, Stephen Dattels and his associates secured the rights to Trekkopje by purchasing Gulf Western Trading Namibia from businessman George Christodoulou[6] for $4.365 million.
Thousands of American investors, including stars Elvis Presley,[7] Johnny Carson and Alice Cooper, believe they were cheated in an allegedly fraudulent project by Christodoulou in Namibia in the late 1970s.
[6] In 2006, Olivier Fric, a consultant specializing in energy issues and Anne Lauvergeon's husband,[9] passed on the curriculum vitae of Belgian financier Daniel Wouters, who was subsequently hired in April by Areva as head of development and acquisitions for its mining division[10] to act as an intermediary in the takeover of Canadian company UraMin.
In March 2007, Areva first announced the purchase of 5.5% of Uramin's capital, causing the share price to soar, before buying the entire company three months later for $2.5 billion.
On January 2, 2008, Sébastien de Montessus became Chairman of Uramin Holding, a société par actions simplifiée (simplified joint-stock company) based on rue La Fayette (Paris),[2] as well as Director of the Areva Group's Mining Business Unit.
[28] This is why, in April 2008, Belgian entrepreneur George Forrest and Patrick Balkany, deputy mayor (UMP) of Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), acted as intermediaries in Areva's purchase of UraMin's Central African uranium mines.
[29][30] On August 1, 2008, Anne Lauvergeon signed an amendment to the Bakouma mining concession contract, committing the company to pay forty million dollars to the Central African state.
[32] On October 28, 2009, Vincent Crouzet met with Saïfee Durbar at his home in London (Ilchester Place, near Holland Park) and spoke at length with him about the Uramin affair.
[6] In February 2010, Admiral Thierry d'Arbonneau, Areva's Director of Safety, recruited Marc Eichinger, a business intelligence expert with the consulting firm Assistance Petroleum International Capital (APIC), to investigate the Uramin takeover.
He "made provisions of 426 million euros in 2010 for UraMin uranium quantities, and included a paragraph in the notes to the annual financial statements referring to chemical tests that were not very good".
[33] On February 2, 2011, Sébastien de Montessus met with Swiss detective Mario Brero at the Kempinski Hotel in Geneva to commission him to investigate the Uramin takeover, and in particular Anne Lauvergeon and her husband Olivier Fric.
He was astonished that "the Agence des participations de l'État, which was initially very cautious about the dossier, considered it a great victory in July 2007", but a few months later, Areva had to make provisions of 2.36 billion in its budget to settle its debts.
At the same time, Luc Oursel, newly appointed Chairman of Areva's management board in June 2011, commissioned lawyer Jean Reinhart to produce a report on the UraMin[39] fiasco.
[40] Sébastien de Montessus, head of the group's mining division, and a number of Areva executives had allegedly commissioned an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Uramin transaction, and in particular the murky role played by Anne Lauvergeon's husband, Olivier Fric.
[43] She believes she is the victim of a plot to destabilize her, orchestrated by a handful of executives - chief among them Areva's Mining Director, Sébastien de Montessus - to oust her.
[44] According to information on the "Pomerol 4" report published in the press, the telephone numbers dialed by Olivier Fric "include that of a banker working for Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT) and those of other banks, Clariden Leu and Crédit Suisse.
At the time of the Uramin sale, the President of South Africa was dangling a huge nuclear power plant construction contract worth over 100 billion euros in front of Areva.
[46] A surprising detail is that Areva's Anne Lauvergeon and Uramin's Ghanaian Sam Jonah sat together on the International Investment Council, the body appointed by Thabo Mbeki to steer South Africa's economic policy.
[51] On April 10, 2014, journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme published an article in the daily Le Monde revealing that the financial prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into Anne Lauvergeon's suspicious purchase of UraMin.
[52] In May 2014, a pre-report by the French Cour des Comptes on Areva's management under Anne Lauvergeon highlighted "the concentration of real power in the hands of the CEO".
[55] On June 3, 2014, as part of an investigation into the takeover of Uramin, police officers carried out a dozen searches at Areva and the home of its former president Anne Lauvergeon.
[58] On November 2, 2014, the Republic of Central Africa referred to the National Financial Prosecutor's Office a request for a judicial investigation into Patrick Balkany, suspected of having been one of the beneficiaries of the payment of kickbacks in the Uramin affair.
[68] On October 12, Reuters revealed, from a judicial source, that "Areva's former CFO, Alain-Pierre Raynaud, has been indicted in the investigation into the valuation of the mining company Uramin."
Then it was the former chairman of Areva's audit committee, René Ricol, who was summoned by judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke, Claire Thépaut and Charlotte Bilger.
On May 5, 2017, the national financial prosecutor's office requested the indictment of Anne Lauvergeon, Gérald Arbola, Alain-Pierre Raynaud, Thierry Noircler (former audit director), Sébastien de Montessus and Nicolas Nouveau (former Areva CFO) for obstructing the statutory auditors' mission.
In addition, the public prosecutor's office is requesting that Sébastien de Montessus and Nicolas Nouveau be charged with complicity in the presentation of inaccurate annual accounts and the dissemination of misleading information.
When the examining magistrates refused to proceed with these new indictments, the public prosecutor's office applied to the Paris Court of Appeal, which upheld this request in October 2018.
