Bernard Tapie, the former majority shareholder of Adidas, has lost a final appeal in French courts against a ruling that he should reimburse €404 million paid out to him after arbitration proceedings around the sale of the sports company in 1993. Tapie has long alleged that he was fleeced by the formerly state-owned Crédit Lyonnais bank in the sale of Adidas to investors around Robert Louis-Dreyfus. After long drawn-out court proceedings, the French government agreed to solve the issue through an arbitration committee, which caused an uproar by awarding compensation of €404 million to the controversial businessman in 2008. However, the award was annulled amid claims that Tapie's side failed to disclose alleged ties with one of the three arbitrators. Tapie appealed but last month the Cour de Cassation, France's highest court, backed a ruling by the court of appeal in December 2015 that Tapie should reimburse the compensation. One of his lawyers has reportedly suggested that he may take the case to the European level. Furthermore, it remains to be seen if the French state (in the shape of an organization that was set up to deal with the bad debts of the state banks) will be able to recover the money. The imbroglio even involved Christine Lagarde, current head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and French finance minister in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy at the time when the state approved the arbitration proceedings and failed to appeal the panel's ruling. Last December, the French Court of Justice of the Republic, a special court for minister and former ministers, found Lagarde guilty of negligence but did not hand down any punishment.

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