Top French Lawyer Found 'Swimming With The Fishes'
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. Top French lawyer Olivier Metzner's body found near private island 
Figure
nicknamed the 'gangsters' lawyer', whose clients included Manuel Noriega,
discovered near Brittany island of Boëdic.
French
lawyer Olivier Metzner's body was found floating near his private island in
Brittany. A suicide note was reportedly found at his house. Photograph:
NIVIERE/SIPA/Rex Features
One of
the giants of the French legal system was found dead near his private island
in Brittany on Sunday morning. A suicide note was discovered at his home
nearby.
Olivier
Metzner, 63, nicknamed the "gangsters' lawyer", was a
larger-than-life figure known for his spirited defence of high-profile and
controversial defendants including the Panamanian former dictator Manuel
Noriega, the "rogue trader" Jérôme Kerviel and Continental
Airlines, accused of causing the catastrophic Concorde crash in 2000.
In
recent years, he had argued for the former prime minister Dominique de
Villepin in the Clearstream scandal, represented rock star Bertrand Cantat
when he was accused of killing his actor girlfriend, and argued the case of
Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers who tried to have her ailing mother, the the
L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, declared a ward of court.
Named
France's most powerful lawyer by GQ magazine last year, Metzner was often to
be seen standing at the top of the Palais de Justice's monumental steps,
puffing away on his trademark cigar. Occasionally, he would ignore the
no-smoking signs and light up inside, confident that no court official or
police officer would dare challenge him.
Outside
the courts, where he would pick holes in legal procedure to get his clients
off the hook, often in the most blunt of terms and so successfully that
Libération described him as the "criminal fraternity's specialist",
Metzner was a discreet figure.
Born in
1949 to dairy farmers in Normandy, whose ancestors had fled Prussia in the
late 19th century, Metzner described himself as the product of a modest but
"rigorous Normand and Protestant education". All three Metzner
children escaped the countryside; his brother became a scientist and his
sister a teacher in Canada.
He
chose law after devouring the works of Kafka and reading a story in his local
paper about a shepherd who had been sentenced to death.
"He
was from the mountains and incapable of explaining his defence in any
understandable language. It made me want to be an interpreter for those who
had difficult expressing themselves in front of the court and at the same
time explain the justice system to them, because the incomprehension goes
both ways," he once said.
After
studyirumormillnews.coeaded for Paris, saying two decades in the "damp
countryside" was long enough, and a career that was rewarding in every
sense. Decades after his first case, in which he successfully defended a
thief, he admitted his hourly fee had risen to €450 (£390). His last case,
last month, was defending the Swiss petrol group Vitol, accused of breaking
the United Nations "food for oil" embargo in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Metzner
never married and described himself as "leftwing at heart".
In 2010
he bought Boëdic Island in the Morbihan Gulf in Brittany, which he described
as a "magnificent, remarkable place". But at the end of last year
he announced his intention to sell it, saying he had "more interesting
plans". "I am a man of projects," he told AFP in November.
His
body was found at about 10am on Sunday floating near the island.
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1 comment:
His ego was so great, he would probably pretend to teach the fish how to swim...
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