One of the symbols of French capitalism, Serge Dassault died following a heart attack on Monday May 28th, 2018. He was 93. Dassault had a variety of different roles and positions in life; he was chief executive officer of the Dassault Group aeronautical empire founded by his father Marcel, owner of the right-wing Le Figaro newspaper, and had been mayor of Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris and a Senator for the conservative Les Républicains party, as well as being a friend of politicians on both the Right and Left. In this, he represented a very French way of doing business, mixing business and politics at the highest levels of state.
But Dassault's successes as an industrialist were tarnished by his involvement in corruption affairs and scandals. In 1998 he was sentenced for corruption in connection with an aviation contract in Belgium and 20 years later was convicted for “laundering the proceeds of tax fraud” and placed under investigation for “buying votes” during council elections in Corbeil-Essonnes. He will therefore never be tried for this alleged voting fraud, one of the biggest in recent French history.
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Unlike his father Marcel, Serge Dassault minutely planned his succession at the family's business. His loyal right-hand man Charles Edelstenne, aged 80, will automatically take over the reins of the Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault (GIMD), as the family holding company is called. This was a decision Serge Dassault took in 2014 to end the quarrelling over the succession between his eldest sons Laurent and Olivier.
To understand Serge Dassault's life one first has to understand the peculiar relationship he had with his talented father Marcel Dassault, the legendary figure who founded the group and invented the Mirage fighters and who was himself a right-wing Member of Parliament. Serge was looked down on by Marcel and kept away from the real levers of power in the family group until the age of 61 and his father's death. From that point on Serge Dassault did all he could to surpass his father, managing to acquire along the way some of Marcel's bad habits, such as the doling out of wads of notes to achieve his ends.
He was born Serge Bloch in Paris in 1925 and was aged 19 when he, his parents and many other Jews were interned first in Lyon in eastern France then at the Drancy internment camp north-east of Paris. This camp was used as a holding camp for Jews before they were sent to Nazi death camps. His father Marcel was himself sent to Buchenwald in August 1944 and narrowly escaped death. After the Liberation of Europe Marcel Bloch renamed his family Dassault and they converted to Catholicism.
After the war Serge Dassault attended the prestigious higher education institution Polytechnique and the aeronautical engineering institute SUPAERO and joined the family business in 1951. His one dream was to build planes alongside his father and succeed him one day. But Marcel was cool and disdainful towards his son, relegating him in the 1970s to running the group's electronics subsidiary, banning him from any direct involvement with the group's aircraft programmes and refusing to grant him any real power.
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This meant that Serge Dassault had to wait until the death of his father in 1986 before, finally, at the age of 61 he could take over as head of the group. His long wait had nurtured within him a thirst for revenge and a fierce desire to surpass his father on all fronts, using the same methods.
His achievements as an industrialist were considerable. Though for many years he struggled to sell his group's flagship Rafale fighters, Serge Dassault kept his company profitable, developed the Falcon business jets and the subsidiary Dassault Systèmes, a world leader in 3D design and product lifecycle management. This has led to Dassault becoming fifth on the list of the richest people in France with a fortune of 21.6 billion euros, according to the magazine Challenges.
However, he owed a considerable portion of his success to orders from the public sector and state, and to the fact that he was able to build on the formidable network of contacts established by his father. His discretion about his links to politicians was clear when he told Le Point magazine: “I prefer not to speak about them, they're all friends.” A mayor, then a Senator for the right-wing Les Républicains, and the owner of Le Figaro since 2004, Serge Dassault was one of the most powerful men in France, who was on familiar terms with successive French presidents and and who cultivated friendships on both Left and Right.
'As usual the state is supporting Dassault'
Whatever the political hue of the government in power, Dassault knew how to protect the lucrative sale of Rafale planes to the French air force, even going so far as to threaten stopping production if need be. His honeymoon period came after 2007 when his friend Nicolas Sarkozy became president and gave the industrialist the chance to bid for control of the defence firm Thales, even though it was three times the size of Dassault Aviation.
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This move was strongly criticised by the socialist candidate for the presidency in 2012, François Hollande. But as soon as the new president was installed in the Élysée, he then became the Rafale's best salesperson. It was thanks in large part to President Hollande's efforts and those of his defence secretary Jean-Yves Le Drian that Dassault finally picked up three Rafale deals after 2015, with Egypt, Qatar and India. Indeed, it was François Hollande who himself perfectly summed up the relationship between the country and the aircraft manufacturer, during the air show at Le Bourget near Paris in 2013. Giving the then 88-year-old industrialist a helping hand up some steps, President Hollande remarked: “The state is supporting Dassault, as usual.”
Serge Dassault's only failure in the end was his inability to impose his political ideas. An ultra-liberal, he campaigned for the end of the country's wealth tax and the abolition of the 35-hour working week, and called for lower employer contributions and for employment rights to be relaxed. Calling for a liberalisation of temporary contracts in 2012, he said: “Everything is uncertain - health, work and life. You can't do anything about it.” He also wanted the removal of the word “equality” from France's famous republican motto, on the grounds that “inequality is part of nature, of life”.
The industrialist accused the socialists of having brought “cancer” and “decadence” to France but he also attacked the French Right, whom he considered too soft, to the point of embarrassing his own political camp. Ahead of the 2017 presidential campaign he drew up his own corrosive set of policies, which included banning same-sex marriage, re-establishing border controls “to stop foreigners entering” and six months of civic service under military supervision to get unemployed youths aged 18 or over to get back on the right path.
But the story of Serge Dassault is also one of dirty money. After Marcel Dassault's death in 1986, Serge Dassault took over his father's hidden bank accounts in Switzerland, which had been used in particular to finance his election campaigns, and also inherited his faithful Swiss accountant Gérard Limat, who was in charge of discreetly managing the undeclared stashes of cash.
These hidden funds were used in 1995 when Serge Dassault paid 1.5 million euros in bribes to Belgian politicians to get an aeronautical deal. Dassault, who was given a two-year suspended prison term for corruption by the courts in Belgium, used a brazen defence during his trial. He claimed that he was not aware of the Swiss account as it was in the name of his mother Madeleine, and that it was in fact his mother, who had subsequently died, who had given him a helping hand without his knowledge.
However, six years later, during a lecture to former students of the HEC business school in France, Dassault admitted his practices. Attacking the OECD convention forbidding the use of bribes in international deals, Dassault spoke about his group's Rafale jets for which he could not find a buyer: “What's more, we have to be virtuous, we mustn't pay any more commissions! We lost three deals like that.”
Though no links could be proven between them in any scandals, Serge Dassault was close to the middleman Alexandre Djouhri, who is today at the heart of allegations of Libyan funding of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. At one point Djouhri used to call Dassault “Sergio Bin Marcel”. According to specialist journalist Jean Guisnel, Djouhri was involved in a failed attempt to sell Rafale jets to Libya in 2007. Three years later, when Dassault wanted to secretly fund the rescue of a factory in Corbeil-Essonnes in the middle of an election campaign, he used Alexandre's son, Germain Djouhri as a front, paying father and son a total of 200,000 euros each, the money going into bank accounts in London and Moscow.
But it was above all Serge Dassault's passion for politics that saw him dragged into various murky affairs. Once again it stemmed from a desire to do better than his father, who was an MP in the Oise département or county north of Paris for 28 years. To add to the challenge, in 1976 Serge Dassault chose as his political battleground Corbeil-Essonnes. This was a town that was considered to be out of the reach of the Right, a left-wing suburb of Paris which was a stronghold of the French Communist Party, whom Dassault loathed.
As an MP, Marcel Dassault had been well-known for handing out 'Pascals', as 500 franc notes were known because they carried an image of mathematician Blaise Pascal. Under the guise of social aid, his son Serge did the same among the inhabitants of Corbeil. Nonetheless, it took until 1995 and three failed attempts before Serge Dassault finally became mayor of the town. He never succeeded in his aim of being a local MP. Instead, battle weary after his long political struggles, he instead opted to become a Senator in 2004.
'I'm being watched by the police'
Though he had long coveted power in the town, Serge Dassault's foray into the politics of Corbeil and the Essonne département soon turned into a nightmare for him. To conquer this disadvantaged town and its run-down estates – at the time its Tarterêts estate was reputed to be one of the toughest in France – the industrialist allied himself with youths with lengthy criminal records who were handsomely paid in order to keep the peace socially, or even hand out cash to voters, prosecutors suspected.
In 2009 Dassault's re-election as mayor was annulled by the top administrative body the Conseil d'État because of “donations of money”. But the businessman thumbed his nose at the judgement by simply installing his placeman Jean-Pierre Bechter as mayor. Dassault even took over the latter's office, officially to carry out his duties as a Senator.
A judge-led investigation into the allegations, which was opened in 2010, unearthed the incredible system that had operated locally. Between his first election as mayor of Corbeil in 1995 and the end of 2015, Serge Dassault used his faithful Swiss accountant Gérard Limat to deliver a total of 53 million euros in cash, wrapped up in plastic bags, to his Paris office off the roundabout on the Champs-Élysées. The deliveries were most frequent during elections.
Serge Dassault also used his offshore stashes of money to send millions of euros to the suspected ringleaders of his alleged electoral corruption in Corbeil. When Swiss and Luxembourg banks, worried about the risks of money-laundering, froze the industrialist's accounts, he simply set up another slush fund in Lebanon. This led to some bizarre episodes, for example when one of his suspected lieutenants moved to Beirut, carrying 200,000 euros stuffed down his underpants during the plane trip. To the allegations about his system, Serge Dassault replied that his generosity had no ulterior motives and did not target electors or elections.
Over the years, as the millions of euros flowed, the Dassault system became almost mafia-like, to the point that some judges nicknamed Corbeil “Palermo-sur-Seine”. The problem for Dassault was that it was impossible to pump millions of euros into a deprived area where half of all young people are jobless without repercussions. Among the rundown blocks of flats, Dassault's generosity attracted both greed and jealously. Turf wars over drugs became turf wars over money from 'The Old Man', as he was nicknamed in Corbeil. It was the start of a spike in violence.
Dassault and those close to him were threatened and harassed by people who said they would inform the press and the legal authorities about the 'system' if they did not get money. In March 2010 a group of youths overturned tables at the council building and shouted “Dassault, keep your promises”. In May 2013 the daughter of a close Dassault ally, Jacques Lebigre, who was known as the “bag carrier”, was violently assaulted by burglars.
Some youths even harassed Serge Dassault's family on the phone. But, curiously, the billionaire never made a formal complaint to the authorities before the alleged electoral corruption was made public. He even agreed to pay 1.8 million euros to a youth convicted for an assault on two riot police officers, after the young criminal had stolen the industrialist's notebook in which he had recorded the sums handed out to certain inhabitants in Corbeil.
The 2010 mayoral election marked the climax of the system's downward spiral. One of the alleged leaders of the vote-buying system – a claim he denies – is Younès Bounouara, who was accused of having defrauded some of the footsoldiers in charge of “convincing” voters.
In January 2013 Rachid Toumi, an alleged “lieutenant” of the system who said he had been unable to pay his election helpers on the ground because he had not received the money he had been promised, was shot at with a rifle while he was driving. He only escaped by ducking onto the passenger seat.
At the same time another electoral “agent” who claimed he had been conned went with a friend and his brother-in-law Fatah Hou to try and trap Dassault by using a hidden camera. The recording, revealed by Mediapart, is damning. Dassault is heard saying that if Younès Bounouara had not paid out money then “that's his business” and that he, Dassault, had “given it all to him”. The industrialist also says that he had closed the Lebanese section of the financing system and could not give any more because he was “being watched by the police” (hear recording below). The investigative magazine Le Canard Enchaîné later revealed that Bounouara had received 1.7 million euros from Dassault in Lebanon.
Out of the three involved in the secret recording, Fatah Hou was regarded as one of the main “nuisances” by Jean-Pierre Bechter, mayor of Corbeil and Dassault's faithful follower. On February 13th, 2013, Dassault and Bechter met for lunch with a Moroccan diplomat in Paris. They discussed what would happen to Hou, who was originally from Morocco, when he visited that country. Speaking on the phone after the lunch, Bechter said: “I sense that when they arrive in Morocco they're going to be surprised by the welcome when they get off the plane.” According to Dassault and those close to him, this simply referred to the organising of a “mediation” process with Hou's family.
'There's one law for Serge Dassault and one law for the others'
Fatah Hou was supposed to fly to Morocco on March 5th, 2013. But he never even got as far as the airport. By chance on February 19th he crossed paths with Younès Bounouara. Bounouara accused Hou of having leaked the video of Dassault to Le Canard Enchaîné. Shortly afterwards Bounouara, shot at Fatah Hou's car and two bullet stuck him. Hou miraculously escaped death but remains disabled. Bounouara, who portrays himself as Dassault's “soldier”, was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempted murder, a sentence confirmed on appeal on May 22nd this year.
Serge Dassault was never implicated in the attempted murder. But he had no compassion for the victim who had denounced his 'system'. Two days after the shooting, as Fatah Hou was fighting for his life in hospital, Jean-Pierre Bechter was on the telephone recounting to someone a conversation he had just had with Dassault. “This morning Serge … arrived, he was very playful, and put on a solemn face and said to me 'Jean-Pierre, you don't think I should send some flowers to Fatah Hou?' And suddenly he let out an enormous laugh.”
The billionaire was so powerful that he felt he was above the law and for years he indeed benefited from a certain impunity. In 2007 he got Claude Guéant, then President Sarkozy's chief of staff, to remove the prefect in the Essonne département who had dared to refuse to validate the town's budget.
When, under the Sarkozy presidency, reports of the election corruption claims finally started landing on the desks of prosecutors, the judicial system seemed to have done all it could to avoid dealing with the affair. Files were buried and a preliminary investigation dragged on. It took four years and for the case to be handed to judges specialising in financial crimes, Serge Tournaire and Guillaume Daieff, for the investigation to finally get underway.
When Serge Dassault's Paris home was searched, the industrialist refused to open the door to police for 45 minutes, shouting to officers that they should not be there because he was a senator. In normal cases the officers would have broken down the door. But on this occasion the divisional superintendent at the scene waited patiently for Dassault's lawyer, who had been woken up at 6am, to arrive. He finally persuaded Dassault to open the door.
Having been placed under formal investigation – one step short of charges being brought – in 2014 for “buying votes” and “illegal campaign financing”, Serge Dasault used all the devices and appeals possible to delay any potential trial and keep his seat as a senator for as long as possible Given the slowness of proceedings, the national financial crimes prosecution unit then decided to take action against him for “laundering the proceeds of tax fraud” in relation to the offshore stashes of money that he had used to finance the alleged electoral corruption.
The industrial responded by showing his disdain for the justice system, refusing all summons for questioning during the investigation. He then snubbed his own trial in 2016, even though just a few days earlier he had attended the official christening of the new intake at the French air force school at Salon-de-Provence in southern France; that year was named the 'Marcel Dassault' intake, in honour of Serge Dassault's father. “For Serge Dassault, there's his law and there's the law for others,” prosecutor Ulrika Delaunay-Weiss told judges at the trial. “It's down to you to say that the law also applies to Serge Dassault, even if he doesn't like it.”
A small-time crook who carried out a similar obstruction of justice would doubtless have been dealt with severely. But the court in this instance rewarded Dassault's gesture by saying that he could not be tried because he had not been heard in the case. In this way Dassault gained an extra year. Then in February 2017 he was finally convicted and given a two million euro fine and banned from standing for office for five years. This punishment was not immediately applied because the industrialist appealed. Finally, under pressure from his own party, Dassault decided not to stand again for the Senate elections in September 2017.
Finally, Serge Dassault's death raises the question of who will succeed him as head of strategically-important company. The Dassault group is the sole supplier of fighter planes to the French air force, is the joint major shareholder along with the state in defence manufacturers Thales, and through its involvement in Thales is a shareholder in the naval industrial group Naval Group, which makes France's military vessels and nuclear submarines.
Like his father, Serge Dassault wanted to keep absolute control over the group until his death, marginalising his four children within the enterprise. His youngest children, Thierry and Marie-Hélène, have never shown any ambition to head the group. But his eldest sons Olivier, 66, who is an MP in the same constituency as his grandfather Marcel, and Laurent, 64, who runs the group's auction house and the Château Dassault vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region, have been battling it out for more than a decade to see who succeeds their father.
A man of contradictions
Several different sources have suggested that Serge Dassault, who was looked down on by his father, was convinced that his children were incapable of taking his place. But unlike his father, Serge Dassault planed his succession meticulously. He was deeply attached to the survival of the family firm and nearly 20 years ago transferred the bare ownership of his shares in the GIMD holding company to his children and grandchildren. This meant they could not sell them or dispose of them in any way. He took other legal and financial steps, too, to ensure control of the group did not pass outside the family.
In 2014 Dassault also abruptly brought the war of succession between his sons to an end by getting a change made to the group's statutes which removes them even further from power. It stipulates that on his death his loyal right-hand man at the group, Charles Edelstenne, the former boss of Dassault Aviation, will automatically become the “succeeding chairman”, in other words the boss of the group, until he reaches the age of 85 on January 9th, 2023. By that date Olivier and Laurent will be aged 71 and 69 respectively.
After Serge Dassault's death on Monday a spokesperson for the group told Mediapart that this measure was still in force. The four children can still remove the 'regent' chosen by their father but on two conditions: that they either all agree on a successor between them, or they reach an agreement on a successor with the “committee of the wise” set up by Serge Dassault to keep an eye on his children. This committee includes the Swiss accountant Gérard Limat, the group's former finance director Philippe Hustache, Dassault's notary Bernard Monassier, the former vice-president of employers federation MEDEF, Denis Kessler, and the ex-boss of utilities giants Veolia and EDF, Henri Proglio.
Ultimately Serge Dassault was a man of contradictions. He was a brilliant student and a talented industrialist but he was also unable to escape from the all-enveloping shadow of his father. He was a boss who was socially aware in his own company, with his employees benefiting from a generous profit-sharing scheme, yet at the same time he espoused ultra-liberal economic views. He attacked the culture of dependency but splashed money around the poorer areas of Corbeil-Essonnes. And as a senator he called for tough treatment for criminals yet allied himself with some dubious figures on local estates in Corbeil, and found the legal system a little too tough when it came to the political and financial cases he was involved in.
When in a 2014 interview with Le Point magazine Dassault was asked what he would like people to recall about his life, he replied: “Perseverance. You must always go right to the end of what it is you've begun, whatever the circumstances.” Serge Dassault waited too long to start, at the age of 61, the career of an aeronautical industrialist, politician and press baron which he had dreamed of since he was a teenager. His story is that of a man who was able, through talent, money and influence, to haul himself to the peaks of where power resided, and who did all he could to ensure he enjoyed that influence right to the end.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter