This company is merely the umbrella company of the offshore structures through which the misuse of company assets and funds took place for the personal benefit of Jacques Saadé and to the detriment of the CMA-CGM group.

In the section related to “offshore companies” it should be noted that almost all these structures held names derived either from CMA-CGM or Merit, with the clear intent to render difficult and even impossible tracing the transfer of funds between the various subsidiaries¹⁴.

This systematic plunder is illustrated by Merit Corporation s.a.l.

It is surprising to note that the personal company of Jacques Saadé acquired interests in subsidiaries of CMA-CGM so as to tighten the noose around the Group, and thus facilitate the flow of funds in the complete absence of transparency.

For example:

Merit Corporation s.a.l. owned 24.7% of Crown House Europe, 25% of which was owned by CMA-CGM, whereas all of these shares should have belonged to the latter directly.

We can also identify the same mechanism regarding Terminal Link s.a, which controls 100% of Malta Freeport Terminal Limited s.a.- and other numerous companies-, 90% of which are owned by CMA-CGM, and 9.93% of its capital is owned by Merit Corporation through Holding CMA-CGM.. And the case is similar for Rail Link, controlled by CMA-CGM and in which Merit Corporation s.a.l. owns 24.8% of the shares through the same front company, Holding CMA-CGM.

This organization allowed Jacques Saadé to personally appropriate in an upward manner, shares of companies which should have been totally controlled by the CMA-CGM group, and  to downwardly tap into the funds of the said companies by diverting them from their legitimate beneficiary, CMA-CGM.

This company, formerly known as Merit France S.A., created precisely on 1 October, 1996, and listed in the Registrar of Companies of Marseille on 3 October, was the structure intended to ultimately ensure Jacques Saadé's personal control, over CGM. Its creation was scheduled a few days before the CGM privatization decree and was planned in the most skillful way in order to take full and total control of CGM.

Once this set-up was implemented, Merit France S.A.’s name was changed into Holding CMA-CGM, and was fully owned and shared by Jacques Saadé along with his wife and daughter as members of the Board of Directors.

With time, and with the worsening of CMA’s financial situation along with the leakage of its equity funds, we noticed that Holding CMA-CGM held a key position in the purchase of vessels and the issuance of related guarantees that were in fact detrimental to CMA.

According to a list issued by Lloyd’s, 54 vessels out of the entire CMA-CGM chartered fleet are owned by Holding CMA-CGM!

According to the cash flow agreements signed between CMA-CGM and CMA, it seems that those vessels were purchased with CMA-CGM’s funds and have been financed by the latter through rental payments to Holding CMA-CGM S.A. Those suspicions are reinforced by the fact that Holding CMA-CGM S.A. in turn held itself as guarantor of CMA near the ship sellers.

In other words Holding CMA-CGM organizes the purchase of vessels by its subsidiary CMA, issues guarantees in favor of the latter and finally takes ownership after the full price has been settled by CMA. We can fully appreciate the one way financial flow as the purchaser is not the real owner despite the fact that he is the one making the related payments bearing in mind that the final beneficiary is none other than Holding CMA-CGM, in other words Jacques Saadé personally.

As an example, the Holding CMA-CGM’s Board of Directors of 17 February, 1998 approved the issuance of payment guarantees on behalf of CMA and for the benefit of German companies for the total amount of 6.939.000 USD. This same Board of Directors met on 21 June, 1998, merely four months later, to cancel and replace the decisions taken during the meeting of 17 February, 1998, and increase the value of those guarantees to 8.577.000 USD in favor of the above-mentioned German companies, following CMA’s accumulated payment delays.