Ex-judicial administrator, Michel Gillibert, has been sentenced to 4.5 years in jail (with 3 of those years existing as a suspended sentence) for the attempted blackmail of historic French football agent Jean-Pierre Bernès.
Gillibert, 70, has been sentenced following an attempt to extort France national team boss Didier Deschamps’ agent at the back end of 2014. Gillibert has also been handed a €100k fine. The prosecution was initially seeking 5 years in jail for Gillibert, with a suspended sentence of 3 years.
The court has confirmed that Gillibert will serve an 18 month term through house arrest under electronic surveillance.
In 2014, Gillibert was instructed to recover €11m in damages on behalf of the commercial court from Bernès and other individuals linked to the fixed accounting affair at Olympique de Marseille in 1998. Gillibert enlisted the help of one of his friends, linked to local crime, to convince Bernès to part with €2m. Gillibert has admitted that it was “a stupid idea,” but affirms that all he wanted to do was to sound out the solvency of Bernès and understand if he had foreign bank accounts or not.
James Thorpe | GFFN
