Serge Dassault (born 4 April 1925) is a French entrepreneur ( Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dassault Group) and conservative politician. According to Forbes magazine, as of 2006[update] he was the 56th richest person in the world.
Dassault is the son of Marcel Dassault, from whom he inherited the Dassault Group. Since the elder Dassault's death, he has continued developing the company, with the help of current CEO Charles Edelstenne.
Serge Dassault studied at the École polytechnique and Supaéro. During the Second World War, he was jailed when his father was sent to Buchenwald for refusing to cooperate with the Germans in the airplane industry.
Dassault's group also owns 82% of Socpresse which controls many important French newspapers and magazines, including Le Figaro, and L'Express.
He is a member of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, as is his son Olivier, who is a deputy in the French National Assembly. He is the mayor of the city of Corbeil-Essonnes, a southern suburb of Paris. In 2004, Serge Dassault helped finance the 200-million-euro Islamic cultural center (essentially, a mosque) in his city of Corbeil-Essonnes out of his own funds.
In December 1998, Dassault was sentenced to two years' probation in the Belgian Agusta scandal, and was fined 60,000 Belgian francs (about €1,500).
In 2004, Serge Dassault became a senator, and in this position, he has been an outspoken advocate of conservative positions on economic and employment issues, claiming that France's taxes and workforce regulations ruin its entrepreneurs.
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