The French Member of Parliament and billionaire Olivier Dassault died in a helicopter crash on March 7, 2021. He was 69 years old.
Dassault, a lawmaker with the center-right Republicans Party, was killed in Calavdos in Normandy, Northern France. He was last seen in a public engagement on March 5 in Beauvais near Paris with Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin and Prime Minister of France Jean Castex.
The President of France Emmanuel Macron took to Twitter to pay his tributes to Dassault and stated that he never ceased to serve our country and to value its assets and his sudden death is a great loss.
Olivier Dassault aimait la France. Capitaine d’industrie, député, élu local, commandant de réserve dans l’armée de l’air : sa vie durant, il ne cessa de servir notre pays, d’en valoriser les atouts. Son décès brutal est une grande perte. Pensées à sa famille et à ses proches.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 7, 2021
Olivier Dassault was the eldest son of Serge Dassault, the billionaire industrialist, whose group owns Le Figaro newspaper and also builds the Rafale warplanes.
Many of his colleagues on political rights also paid tribute to a man who was also a pilot, a passionate photographer, and a composer of the music.
Background:
The Dassault Aviation group has been a leading plane manufacturer of France for the last 70 years and is behind the Mirage warplane, Falcon private jet, and state-of-the-art Rafale fighter.
According to Forbes magazine, Oliver Dassault was the 361st most wealthy person in 2020. His fortune was estimated to around 5 billion euros – around the same as his three other siblings.
Olivier Dassault belonged to a famed family. His grandfather Marcel Bloch was a famed aeronautical engineer who had changed his name to Dassault meaning ‘on the attack’ in French.
After helping in developing an innovative propeller that was used on French aircraft in World War 1, Marcel Bloch was imprisoned during World War II and was deported to a Nazi Concentration Camp after he refused to collaborate with a German aviation company.
The control of Dassault Aviation company was passed to Serge Dassault, father of Olivier. However, he did not name an heir who will succeed him when he passed away in the year 2018. Olivier had once declared himself as the most qualified among his siblings, which earned a stern public rebuke from her father.
Olivier had resigned as the Chairman of the group’s supervisory board after his father’s death because for him the role was incompatible with his parliamentary duties.
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