The CEO of Indexia and six other group companies have been sued for developing a complex procedure that discouraged consumers from requesting cancellation or reimbursement of their insurance contracts for their multimedia devices. Insurance magnate Sadri Fegaier was sentenced on Tuesday 17 December to two years in prison, of which 16 months, in addition to a fine of 300,000 euros, for “deceptive commercial practices”.
Six companies in the group were also sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court to fines ranging from 150,000 euros to 1.5 million euros. Justice did not order the provisional execution of the prison sentence for Sadri Fegaier, as requested by the prosecution during the hearing.
The boss will have to compensate the victims
The fixed part cannot be modified, and the remaining 8 months of prison are accompanied by a two-year conditional suspension, during which Sadri Fegaier will have to compensate the victims and the Treasury, explained the president, who read the letter for two hours decision.
At the end of the hearings, the 45-year-old businessman and his lawyers left the courtroom without commenting. Sadri Fegaier, as well as the companies SARL SFK Group, SFAM Celside Insurance, Foriou, Cyrana, Hubside and Serena appeared in Paris at the end of September, suspected of having wrongly made hundreds of consumers take out insurance contracts for their multimedia devices (computers, telephones).
They were accused in particular of having developed, between 2014 and 2022, a complex procedure aimed at dissuading them from their resolution or refund requests.
A criminal settlement of 10 million euros in 2019
The Indexia group is mainly known for selling so-called affinity insurance in Fnac-Darty stores between 2017 and 2019, but also in its own Hubside Stores. At the time of purchase, consumers were offered insurance for around fifteen euros per month.
Years later, hundreds of people have seen the withholdings multiply, reaching up to tens of thousands of euros in total, without having signed an endorsement or claiming to have never even signed an insurance contract.
Due to the lack of response from the companies concerned, the deceived customers alerted the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir and sent reports to the fraud suppression agency, which opened an investigation in 2018. This ended in 2019 with a criminal settlement of 10 million euros. However, complaints continued, with many consumers reporting cancellation and refund requests that were never implemented.
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