Justice is interested in Go Sport. While the Grenoble commercial court is due to rule on the fate of the brand on Thursday, it is this time financial movements in the company’s accounts that interest the investigators.
The Grenoble public prosecutor’s office seized the gendarmerie’s research section in November 2022 for the offense of “abuse of social property” concerning the company Go Sport, he said on Wednesday, confirming information from the newspaper Liberation.
“The auditors have transmitted several revelations of criminal facts”, explained the assistant prosecutor François Touret de Coucy, in a press release.
Deficit for years
The 2160 employees of Go Sport, and especially their union representatives and the central social and economic committee (CSEC) have been particularly alarmed in recent months by an increase of 36 million euros in cash from Go Sport to its parent company HPB. (Hermione, People-Brands).
At the end of December, after a first hearing, the courts had given an investigating judge the mission of “making a precise statement of the financial situation” of the group and its subsidiary Go Sport France, with the help of its audit firms and of its auditors.
Loss-making for years, Go Sport, founded in 1978 and based in Sassenage in the suburbs of Grenoble, had been bought at the end of 2021 for a symbolic euro by HPB from the parent company of the Casino food distribution group, the company Rallye, itself even heavily in debt.