Archive image: Arnaud Lagardère with his Belgian wife Jade. — © AFP
French businessman Arnaud Lagardère (63), CEO of the group of the same name, was charged in Paris on Monday. Lagardère, husband of Belgian model Jade Foret, who is 30 years his junior, is suspected of having looted the accounts of his companies for years to finance his lifestyle and personal expenses. A judicial source reports this to AFP.
The businessman is now under judicial control, with a management ban and the obligation to pay a bond of 200,000 euros, the judicial source said. He has been charged with spreading false or misleading information, vote buying, misuse of company resources and abuse of power and failure to submit bills. The facts are said to have occurred from April 2009 to December 2022.
He was interrogated all day in Paris on Monday.
When Arnaud Lagardère, only son, took over the management of the business empire after the death of his father Jean-Luc in 2003, he gradually withdrew from military activities and transport, concentrating on media, publishing and entertainment. Billionaire Vincent Bolloré acquired control of Lagardère with his media giant Vivendi in 2022. Arnaud Lagardère is still at the helm of the group.
Belgian model
In 2019, reports emerged that his holding company would have more than 200 million euros in debt. Since 2011, Lagardère, a good friend of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, has also been under fire for his relationship with the Belgian model Jade Foret. For example, the French newspaper La Tribune titled ‘Is Arnaud still leading the Lagardère group?’ after a sensual video of the two that would affect his seriousness.
In 2013, Lagardère bought the broadcast rights to an unflattering RTBF report that showed him at the end of 2012 as a lovesick teenager who had complexes about his small stature (he is 20 cm shorter than Jade) and who his mother-in-law was in charge of. Le Nouvel Observateur then titled: ‘Murder of French industry’.
Jade Foret, who changed her name to Jade Lagardère after her marriage to Arnaud, was convicted by a French court in 2021 of fraud in obtaining her driver’s license. Lagardère was suspected of paying 15,000 euros to obtain her French driver’s license in 2015 and sending someone else to take her driving test.
One of Lagardère’s sons from his first marriage is with Cassandra Foret, Jade Foret’s younger sister. So her son-in-law is also her brother-in-law.
Arnaud and Jade Lagardère have three children together.