2023-10-20 15:09:47
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS – Less than 300 days before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, legal investigations are piling up around its Organizing Committee. New searches took place on Wednesday October 18, 2023 at the Committee’s headquarters as well as in several event agencies. Like the first two investigations, already opened, it is the procedure for awarding contracts which is the subject of suspicion on the part of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). Cojo and its subcontractors are this time suspected of “illegal taking of interest”of “favoritism” and of “receipt”. This search comes the day after the strike of undocumented workers, who blocked certain Olympic sites.
The information, revealed by several media, was confirmed by the committee: “Paris 2024 confirms that the PNF presented itself at its headquarters on Wednesday October 18”. Event agencies that had won contracts were also raided. These are the companies Double 2, Ubi Bene, Obo and Paname 24, which received a visit from investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF).
Around twenty “potentially contentious” contracts
Paname 24 seems to particularly attract the attention of investigators because the company is “born from the association of five of the largest French event production agencies”. These are Auditoire, Havas Events, Ubi Bene, Obo and Double 2. The agency presents itself as “the repository of executive production” of the opening ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, respectively scheduled for July 26 and August 28, 2024. Moreover, the executive director of ceremonies within Cojo, Thierry Reboul, led Ubi Bene, one of the components of Paname 24 . In 2022, he claimed to have sold his shares, not “can’t say no to a better adventure, that of the Paris games”.
These operations by the PNF and OCLCIFF took place as part of a preliminary investigation opened after the searches of June 20, 2023. The financial prosecutor suspects illegal taking of interest, favoritism and concealment during procedures linked to several markets in relation to the 2024 Olympics. According to several media outlets citing judicial sources, “no police custody took place”. The organizing committee, for its part, expressed its availability to provide “all the information” requested by the PNF. “Paris 2024 is fully collaborating with the investigation as it has always done”, lit-on.
The number of investigations opened for suspicion of irregularities in the award of contracts linked to Paris 2024 is now three. The first two instructions from 2017 and 2022 relate to suspicions of favoritism and misappropriation of public funds during the award of contracts by Cojo and Solideo (Olympic works delivery company), an EPIC (public establishment of an industrial nature and commercial) responsible for the construction of the Olympic works for 2024.
Around twenty potentially contentious contracts are at the heart of these first two instructions. The PNF is also investigating accusations of favoritism targeting the deputy general director of the Olympic organizing committee, Michaël Aloïsio, following a complaint from a former employee, Sébastien Chesbeuf. The latter denounced last August favoritism and influence peddling in the awarding of a public contract with the Paca region (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur). He was working as a consultant with the sports marketing event company Keneo when the region launched a call for tenders to constitute its pre-candidacy file for the 2030 Winter Olympics. Michaël Aloïsio influenced, according to the complainant, the decision of the president of the region, to the disadvantage of Keneo.
Far from being a long quiet river
Well before the complaint targeting this senior Cojo official, two reports from the French Anti-Corruption Agency relating to the organization of the Paris Games pointed out in April 2021 “risks of breaches of probity” and of “conflicts of interest”. The general purchasing procedure was “imprecise and incomplete”according to agency inspectors.
In September, before these new searches, the financial prosecutor of the Republic, Jean-François Bohnert, affirmed that the investigation had not revealed at this stage “very serious acts of corruption or influence peddling”. The PNF was trying to “untangle the way certain contracts were distributed”.
#Paris2024 : “No extremely serious acts of corruption or influence peddling. No police custody during the Olympics. Our objective, a peaceful development of a global event”
Jean-François Bohnert, prosecutor of the Financial Republic, guest of @amandine_begot In #RTLMatin pic.twitter.com/rQMIhlcxOW
— RTL France (@RTLFrance) September 13, 2023
The organization of the Paris Olympics is far from being a smooth ride for Cojo. This third series of searches comes the day after the strike of undocumented workers, who blocked Games sites such as that of the Adidas Arena in the Chapelle district.
Already in June, ten undocumented workers summoned Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC, at the head of the Games projects, before the industrial tribunal. “More than 5,000 workers worked on these sites with 700 labor inspection checks”, justified Tony Estanguet, president of Cojo. But “certain companies are perhaps less scrupulous and have practices that do not respect the law. When this is the case, we correct and sanction”he said.
In addition to the PNF’s instructions and the employment of undocumented workers by subcontracting construction companies, the Committee must also react after the cancellation, during the summer, of several test events planned in the Seine. Designed to host open water swimming events, the river will be, and should be, in less than a year, the scene of the opening ceremony. Tony Estanguet asserts that Cojo is not considering developing a plan B.
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