The Marseilles court has just imposed a very heavy financial penalty on a Spanish temporary work company involved in a case of concealed work. The company Terra Fecundis – recently renamed Work for All – was ordered, on Friday June 10, to pay just over 80 million euros in damages to Urssaf to compensate for the damage linked to the non-payment of social security contributions. . This is a « record »according to M.e Jean-Victor Borel, the lawyer for this organization. The decision, which intervenes in terms of civil interests, is an extension of the judgment rendered on July 8, 2021 on the criminal ground in the same case: the ex-Terra Fecundis was then inflicted with 500,000 euros in fine – the maximum incurred – and suspended prison sentences had been pronounced against several of its leaders or ex-leaders.
The facts in question date back to the period from 2012 to 2015. The Spanish company was prosecuted for having made available to market gardeners established in the South several thousand employees without declaring them to French social organizations. In addition, the workers concerned, mostly of Ecuadorian nationality, suffered serious violations of their rights: unpaid overtime, maximum durations of employment very largely exceeded… It was « Germinal in farms »according to the formula launched during the trial by the public prosecutor, Xavier Leonetti.
“A very good victory”
The offenses were committed by deviating from the so-called “detachment” system. This device allows a boss to send staff abroad while paying social security contributions in the state where he is established. On one condition: “exported” employees must only carry out temporary assignments in the host country. An obligation from which the former Terra Fecundis has been exempted, by having its temporary workers work for months in France, without affiliating them to Urssaf, while paying its contributions in Spain, where they are lower.
Friday’s judgment is a “great victory” as part of “the biggest case of social fraud ever judged in France”says M.e Borel. “The court granted all of our requests”he adds, the damages awarded corresponding to the contributions that the ex-Terra Fecundis should have paid to Urssaf. “It is a great satisfaction”adds M.e Vincent Schneegans, counsel for two CFDT organizations which were civil parties in the proceedings and which obtained 15,000 euros each, “in compensation for moral damage”. The Confédération paysanne, also a civil party, was awarded 10,000 euros in the same way.
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