Mario Martins Cardoso will never forget July 17, 2014. The Portuguese electromechanic was driving on the A1 freeway toward Paris when, at around 1:30 pm, near Roye in northern France, he saw a thick plume of black smoke rise into the sky, followed by a car rolling over before coming to a halt on its side. The 37-year-old got out of his vehicle to assist the passengers in the crashed BMW. On the passenger side, he managed to extract a woman, four months pregnant and slightly injured, as well as his 9-year-old daughter, who was trapped in the back seat, "covered in blood all over," according to his account. The little girl suffered only bruises: The blood was that of her father, Luis Lesmes, who died at the wheel. The British national of Venezuelan origin was an executive at Glencore, an international behemoth specializing in the trading, brokerage, and extraction of raw materials – a detail which will come to matter in this story.

When questioned by the investigators, Elvia Campins Sanchez, who miraculously escaped the tragedy, along with her unborn child, recalled: "A truck was in front of us, and my husband was about to overtake it. At one point, I heard a loud noise, like an explosion. The truck swerved into our lane and we couldn't avoid the impact." The driver of the truck, a MAN belonging to Transports Dubois, was unhurt. The gendarmes found that the accident was caused by a burst front left tire on the vehicle, a Goodyear Marathon LHS II+. Like its predecessor, the LHS II, this well-known model was implicated in a series of suspicious accidents. Since the spring of 2014, the American manufacturer had been trying, discreetly, to withdraw it from the market, without going through an official defective product recall procedure. The same applies to the Dunlop SP 344, also produced by Goodyear. The LHS II, on the other hand, was not included in the exchange campaign. On July 23, 2014, a few days after the accident in Roye, MAN was informed by Goodyear of its commercial program to replace the Marathon LHS II+. But it was too late.

"This letter explained the return of certain tires in order to check their condition and, if necessary, exchange them if there was a fault," Marc Martinez, MAN's director general, told the French gendarmes. His company then sent out a series of warnings to customers who owned trucks fitted with these tires. But it wasn't until August 14 that MAN made Transports Dubois aware of the problem. In its letter, the company wrote about the Marathon LHS II+ in clear terms: "The tire treads may come unstuck." In direct contact with the asphalt, the treads guarantee the tire's grip; any failure on their part constitutes a mortal danger. On September 13, Laurent Dubois, manager of the eponymous company, forwarded MAN's August 14 letter to the gendarmes investigating the accident at Roye, with this comment: "The tires in question have a defect."

You have 86.76% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.