It's an improbable story: a war over wheat, and a shareholder who refuses to be ground down. The stakes are high: the control of the formidable Great Mills of Strasbourg (GMS).

The mill produces 1,200 tonnes of flour each day, and it's at the heart of a battle between its president, Bertrand Leary, and its top shareholder, the Soufflet group, which owns nearly a third of GMS.

A few months ago, Leary decided to bring in a new partner. He secured the green light from the financial markets authority, but the Soufflet group was not privy to the arrangement.

Caught off guard, the Soufflet group took the matter to court. An even bigger surprise awaited the group when they discovered the identity of the new partner. It was none other than Imad Bakri, a familiar name in Western intelligence circles.

The Angola connection

Bakri’s name appears in a UN report on the Angolan civil war during the 1990s. A businessman of Lebanese origins, he was accused of supplying arms to UNITA, then the country’s main rebel movement.

An April 2003 report by Global Witness, a London-based NGO, raised allegations of ties between Bakri and Lebanon's Hezbollah group.

After several attempts to reach GMS management, Christian Sabbagh, the company’s financial director, finally agreed to talk to FRANCE 24.

“There were several rumours reported in the press about his past,” said Sabbagh. “And we - especially Mr. Leary - tried in many ways to get assurances that all these rumours were in fact false - assurances that we and certainly Mr. Leary got and confirmed to us.”

Off the record, FRANCE 24 found out that the company allegedly went so far as to order a report on Bakri from Israeli secret services.

Bakri’s firm, the Metro Trading Company, has a presence in Belgium, Romania, Lebanon, Algeria and Angola. When we paid a visit to the company’s offices in Brussels, our requests for an interview were turned down.

Back in Paris, the National Association of Flour Traders remains cautious. “There are a lot of accusations, but no evidence,” said Joseph Nicot, president of the National Association of Flour Traders. “So, it's out of the question for us right now to make unfounded accusations based on what the press says.”