By Marie Maitre
PARIS Jan 16 (Reuters) – Former Areva boss
Anne Lauvergeon hit back on Monday over a reported spying case
and fraud allegations that cast doubt over the $2.5 billion
purchase of miner UraMin made on her watch in 2007.
The conditions under which the Canada-listed miner was
acquired, as the nuclear industry was undergoing a global
renaissance, have been questioned since Areva’s new management
wrote down nearly the entire value of UraMin in December.
Three separate official investigations are underway – by
nuclear reactor maker Areva, the French energy ministry and
parliament – to examine the circumstances of the purchase and
determine what went wrong. But there is no judicial
investigation. ID:nL6E8CD2R5]
Lauvergeon, who was abruptly replaced at the helm of Areva
last June, on Monday defended her decision to purchase UraMin,
saying the deal was needed to diversify the company’s
geographical footprint and was made at a fair price.
Lauvergeon, who had kept a low media profile since June,
filed a legal suit last month over a confidential intelligence
report into whether her husband, a business consultant,
illegally benefited from the UraMin deal.
“I have been attacked, slandered, spied on, in an unfair
way. Too much is too much,” she told a press briefing in central
Paris on Monday, flanked by her husband and their lawyer.
Lauvergeon named Sebastien de Montessus, whom she appointed
as the head of Areva’s mining business in 2007, as one of the
people who ordered the Swiss report.
“I would be surprised if an ambitious young man like
Sebastien de Montessus had commissionned a report on his boss’s
husband without having powerful allies,” she said.
Continued…
