In Burkina Faso, the legal soap opera between the Bolloré group and SopamSA – a company of Burkinabè businessman Mohamed Sogli – continues. The latter is suing the French group for damages incurred during the transport of an electricity group from France to Burkina Faso.
as reported from Ouagadougou, Yaya Boudani
In 2010, the SopamS group handed over the transport of an electricity group to Sagatrans, a subsidiary of the Bolloré group, from Saint-Nazaire in France to Komsilga, in Burkina Faso. But it is more than a year after the goods were delivered, according to Maitre Jean-Charles Tougma, one of the lawyers in the Sopam SA group. “They forgot the power plant in the port of Abidjan. The consequences are that the goods were instead damaged. We have initiated proceedings to hold this carrier accountable. ”
After expertise once in Ouagadougou, the electrical unit needs to be renovated. The cost of the work has been estimated at approximately CFAF billion, or EUR 3.618 million. The company Sagatrans then refuses to take responsibility for the work, according to Maitre Jean-Charles Tougma, lawyers from the SopamSA group. “After receipt, such damage was found that it was impossible to receive the delivery. Hence the call for expertise and I clarify that it was the expert from Bolloré who came to make the expertise and stop the cost of new goods. ”
Following an 11-year procedure, the three subsidiaries of the Bolloré group were therefore obliged to pay the joint sum of CFA francs 14 629 036 497 (more than EUR 22 million), which corresponds to the compensation related to the damage suffered by the electricity group and the delay prior to its delivery to Ouagadougou. In the face of what the lawyers in the SopamSA group consider to be the refusal to enforce the decision, goods and bank accounts of three subsidiaries of the Bolloré group have been seized since 14 June.
The leaders of the Bolloré group in Burkina Faso did not want to talk about the subject when a bailiff continued to enforce the decision.
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