Flanked by two new defenders, Beny Steinmetz – smile and open shirt collar – appeared free Monday morning to challenge his conviction in January 2021 by the Geneva Criminal Court.
He had been sentenced to five years in prison and 50 million Swiss francs (52 million euros) in compensation for “corruption of public officials” in Guinea.
Since then, Mr. Steinmetz, 66, who maintained his innocence throughout the first trial, has reshuffled his legal team.
“We are waiting for the court to recognize that Beny Steinmetz has not corrupted anyone,” his lawyer Me Daniel Kinzer told AFP before the start of the trial.
From the outset, the lawyer drew up a long list of missteps, errors and misunderstandings, which in his view undermine the prosecution’s arguments.
The trial at first instance was the culmination of a long international investigation opened in 2013 relating to mining permits granted in Guinea to the Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR), in which Mr. Steinmetz had the title of adviser.
According to Mr. Steinmetz’s team, BSGR legally obtained the mining rights and worked, under difficult and complex circumstances, to set up a mining operation that could have benefited Guinea’s national interests.
On the other hand, the Geneva prosecutor’s office accuses him of having set up a financial arrangement via shell companies in order to pay around 10 million dollars in bribes to the fourth wife of the former Guinean president Lansana Conté (deceased in 2008), Mamadie Touré, so that BSGR could obtain mining rights in Guinea.
BSGR obtained in 2008, shortly before the death of Lansana Conté, the right to explore blocks 1 and 2 of one of the largest iron deposits in the world at Simandou, where it invested 170 million dollars.
BSGR sold 51% of its shares to the Brazilian group Vale, for 2.5 billion dollars, in 2010.
– “Corruption pact” –
According to the Geneva public prosecutor’s office, Beny Steinmetz would have promised from 2005, then paid or had paid from 2006 to 2012, bribes – some of which would have passed through Swiss accounts – to Mamadie Touré so that BSGR supplants the Anglo group -Australian Rio Tinto in blocks 1 and 2 of the mine.
Elected in 2010, President Alpha Condé overhauled all the mining permits granted by his predecessor, notably canceling BSGR’s rights in 2014.
According to the Geneva prosecutor’s office, there was a “corruption pact” between Mr. Steinmetz, his representatives in Guinea, former President Conté and Mamadie Touré.
Ms. Touré claimed to have received payments and has since been protected by American justice. She did not appear at trial in 2021, as claimed by the defense and on Monday, Me Kinzer protested that the prosecution rested so much on the testimony of Ms. Touré that he was never able to question . He asked that this testimony be invalidated in its entirety.
Beny Steinmetz, who resided in Geneva when the facts of which he is accused took place, assured that he had “never” asked anyone to pay funds to Ms. Touré.
In a document sent to AFP, Mr. Steinmetz’s team assures that BSGR obtained the mining rights in Guinea completely legally and that the Rio Tinto group lost its mining rights in Simandou because it was not exploiting the site. .
“Mineral rights were taken from a competitor for hoarding them and then awarded to BSGR based on a strong and compelling business case, without the need to bribe a public official,” Kinzer said. .
His client, who lives in Israel, obtained a “safe conduct” to go to his appeal trial, a document guaranteeing him to be able to leave Switzerland freely at the end of the hearing.
The verdict will be known at a later date.
