Jacques Bouthier, 75, regularly ranked among the 500 largest fortunes in France, is suspected of having housed and paid several young women, including minors, in exchange for sexual relations. The day after the revelation of his indictment for “rape of a minor” and “trafficking in human beings”, the CEO of Assu 2000 resigned from his mandate as president, the group, renamed Vilavi in January, said on Tuesday morning. .
What is it about?
It is a young woman of 22 who reveals the affair, mid-March, by presenting herself to the police. She comes to tell that she has been raped by Jacques Bouthier for several years. The first facts date back to 2016. According to her story, this young foreign woman, then a minor and without resources, would have been hosted by the CEO in an apartment located in the Paris region. In return, she said having to remain at his disposal to have paid sex.
One day, the CEO, deeming her too old, would have instructed her to “recruit” a new teenager to serve as her sexual partner under the same conditions, she still reports to the investigators. Once the “new” arrived in the apartment – a 14-year-old teenager in great precariousness – the complainant managed to film her in the same bed as Jacques Bouthier, during one of his visits.
Who are the others charged?
Alongside Jacques Bouthier, five other people were indicted and imprisoned for “criminal conspiracy to commit the crime of kidnapping and kidnapping in an organized gang”. It is the businessman’s own wife, two of his employees, and a former policeman. The latter, Christian G., a former non-commissioned officer in his sixties, ended his career in the early 2000s at the rank of major, after spending 15 years as an operational member of the GIGN (Groupe d intervention of the national gendarmerie). He had then reconverted professionally. According to our information, he was in charge of the security of a large French bank. In the gendarmerie, it is amazement. “It doesn’t fit the profile. Is it a question of money? wonders an ex-GIGN.
These five people would have tried to recover the compromising video shot by the alleged victim of the CEO, the one where he is in the company of his new prey of 14 years. Informed of the existence of this video, the millionaire would then have mobilized these allies to try to recover it by all means, and force the complainant to leave France.
Why do we speak of “trafficking in human beings”?
The first advances would have made it possible to identify several young women, minors or young adults, having known similar experiences in other apartments owned or rented by the multimillionaire. Hence the indictment for “trafficking in human beings”: the Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM) will in particular work to determine whether there was a possible system of exploitation of young women for the purposes of prostitution.
“How many other victims? “Asks this Tuesday morning Martine Brousse, president of the association La Voix de l’enfant, who has decided to become a civil party in this case. “In France, yes, there is modern slavery”, not in disadvantaged neighborhoods but “in these areas of great fortune”, she supports. “Our new Secretary of State will have to tackle this scourge head-on with justice”.
Who is Jacques Bouthier?
This 75-year-old man is the founder of Assu 2000, an insurance and credit brokerage group for individuals, created in 1975. Assu 2000, which became Vilavi last January, claims 1,800 employees and 156 million euros in turnover in 2020.
Jacques Bouthier was the CEO until Tuesday: the group’s communication department announced that he had resigned. The company is “not involved” in the matter, the statement said. “We have taken note of the elements relayed by the press. They are without prejudice to the operational and commercial conduct of the company, around the team in place”, she says.