In front of the basket of croissants on the buffet set up on Thursday July 28 for the annual general meeting of shareholders of Orpea, in the 17e district of Paris, a participant suddenly remembered that the date corresponded to the anniversary of a disastrous decision. In a letter sent a year earlier to Victor Castanet, the management of the European giant of retirement homes and commercial clinics had replied “to be sorry” of “not being able to proceed” to the 56 questions that the journalist had sent him before completing three years of investigation which were to reveal embezzlement of public money and serious mistreatment. “Serious mistake”, regretted, Thursday, this good connoisseur of the file. The end of inadmissibility of the siege appeared as the will to stifle the truth.
Since the release of M. Castanet’s book, The Gravediggers (Fayard, 400 pages, 22.90 euros) sold 160,000 copies, Orpea remained convinced that, faced with the revelations about these abuses, any attempt to defend itself would be “ inaudible ».
The GA held on Thursday was to mark the end of the quilt strategy. The ritual meeting with the shareholders was presented as a “exercise of democracy” – showing a desire to “ change everything from floor to ceiling”, summarizes an expert in the sector.
Turn everything upside down in the staff
A “refoundation” which begins with a household at the top. In front of the few hundred shareholders present, the chairman of the board of directors, Philippe Charrier announced that“about fifteen leaders” from the head office of Orpea had been or were about to be made redundant. At the helm of the company in turmoil since the dismissal in January of its managing director, Yves le Masne, Mr. Charrier willingly played the “Mister Clean”. “A core group of leaders who had been in the company for a long time had put in place a system of concealment which covered up wrongdoing. The co-leaders were not informed of this. » Mr. Charrier insisted: “ All people who left our company for gross negligence left without any compensation. » Orpea has, moreover, filed a complaint against X and an investigation has been opened by the prosecution into alleged financial offenses on the part of certain managers.
After the upheaval in the staff, Orpea went in search of new blood. The general management of the group was entrusted on 1is July, to Laurent Guillot. Former deputy general manager of Saint-Gobain, this 52-year-old polytechnician agreed to become number one with the desire to surround himself with “new talent” who, like him, are not from the medico-social seraglio. “ It’s time to incorporate skills that don’t just come from healing but were first trained in the right houses, the best groups.”, he explained.
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