– Former Lotus owner Gerard Lopez will soon have to answer in court on charges of forgery and use of forged documents. The case is related to the Formula 1 team.
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Lopez had taken over the Renault team at the end of the 2000s through the investment company Genii Capital, which he had founded together with Eric Lux. At that time, the French brand had decided to withdraw from Formula 1 as a works team in the wake of the global financial crisis and the “Crashgate” scandal.
The Lotus team that emerged from this takeover was at times one of the most successful teams of this era: it improved continuously and developed into one of the top teams in the 2012 and 2013 seasons. Kimi Räikkönen achieved two wins during this time (retrieve all statistics on Lotus in the Formula 1 database!). Financially drained, the team went into a significant decline from 2014 onwards before being bought back by Renault in 2015.
What the current case has to do with the Formula 1 team
Now the judiciary is dealing precisely with a transaction from 2014. According to the newspaper Ouest-France, it specifically concerns a suspicious financial transaction of over two million euros between Lotus and the Luxembourg football club CS Fola Esch, whose president Lopez was at the time.
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In addition to Lopez, Lux as well as Mauro Mariani and Francois Dele on the side of Fola Esch must also answer in court.
According to the defendants, the amount in question was intended to support a youth program for young football players. However, the public prosecutor assumes that information in some documents related to the transaction does not correspond to the facts.
Lopez and Lux had filed appeals against the opening of the proceedings. Their last appeal was rejected by the Court of Cassation on May 21. The trial is therefore scheduled to begin in December. In the event of a conviction, the defendants face up to five years in prison.
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