Word: dassault
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Jean-Luc Lagardere trained as an engineer at Marcel Dassault's aircraft-design business in the 1950s and went on to run a small Dassault subcontractor called Matra. In 1980 he diversified into media by acquiring magazine group Hachette and today publishes 222 titles, including Paris Match, Car and Driver and Elle. A foray into TV almost bankrupted Matra, but it recovered, and the publicly traded firm--now called Lagardere Group--with $14 billion in annual sales is weathering the economic downturn. Through aggressive dealmaking, he has spun his stake in Matra into a 15% share of EADS, which makes...
With that kind of muscle, B.C.C.I. was able to secure substantial business from one of the world's pre-eminent makers of military aircraft, Dassault Aviation, the French company that produces the Mirage jet fighter. According to Arif Durrani, a B.C.C.I.-financed Pakistani arms dealer now doing time in a U.S. federal prison for illegally providing Hawk antiaircraft missile parts to Iran during the Iran-contra era, one of the biggest Mirage dealers in the world is a Pakistani multimillionaire named Asaf Ali. "Just as Ghaith Pharaon fronts for B.C.C.I. to purchase banks and businesses, Asaf is B.C.C.I...
...investigators looking at the deal say, he rerouted nearly two dozen Mirages, yet to be paid for, originally brokered through B.C.C.I. to Peru. A political scandal enveloping B.C.C.I. in Peru focuses in part on the financial transactions in the on-again-off-again Mirage deal. But last week a Dassault spokesman, Francois Prigent, briskly dismissed any responsibility. "The shipment to Peru is the business of Peru; what happens to planes after we make a delivery is up to them." The firm also denied connections to B.C.C.I. ("Banks are chosen by clients, not by us") and to Asaf...
...arms merchants interviewed in several countries say otherwise. "Asaf Ali has been an important Dassault agent for years, and everyone knows that," says a French businessman who has worked on arms deals in Pakistan...
...French navy dispatched a Dassault-Breguet Atlantique patrol aircraft from Dakar, Senegal, to join the search, the Defense Ministry said...