A French court found French Rugby Federation president Bernard Laporte and Mohed Altrad guilty of corruption in the award of rugby shirt sponsorship deals to Altrad.
This week Laporte received a two-year suspended prison sentence; Altrad was given an 18-months suspended sentence and a €50,000 fine.
“Mohed Altrad never intended to illegally obtain any favors from Bernard Laporte,” his lawyer said in a statement to the press. “The Altrad group is neither concerned nor impacted by this ruling and Mohed Altrad will continue to invest his time and energy in management missions for his group, its employees and partners.”
Altrad sponsors both the French rugby union national team and the All Blacks, and also owns Montpellier rugby club. In 2015 Mohed Altrad became the first Frenchman to win the World Entrepreneur of the Year award.
The Altrad group was founded in Montpellier by Mohed Altrad, who was born sometime around 1948 in a nomadic tribe in Syria, and orphaned at an early age.
Although he claims to have taught himself to read, having been forbidden to attend school, Mohed Altrad passed his baccalaureate aged 17 and won a scholarship from the Syrian government to study in France. After obtaining a BSc and then a PhD in computer science at the University of Montpellier, Altrad worked for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) before buying a failing scaffolding manufacturer for one franc in 1985.
He has since built it up into a €3bn-turnover international group. Last year it acquired RMD Kwikform for £140m.
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