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A search of the financial brigade was carried out at the headquarters of the organizing committee of the Olympic Games-2024, in Saint-Denis, near Paris, AFP said on Tuesday. Other sites related to the Olympic Games are concerned.
Published on: 06/20/2023 – 10:58Modified on: 06/20/2023 – 16:55
400 days before the events, the Paris-2024 Games must face a major first: the organizing committee (Cojo) and other sites were searched on Tuesday in investigations by the Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), which risk to tarnish the image of JO who want to be “exemplary”.
According to the prosecution, one of these preliminary investigations relates to alleged acts of illegal taking of interests, embezzlement of public funds, favoritism and concealment of favouritism; illegal taking of interests, favoritism and concealment of favoritism for the second. All within the framework of contracts linked to the preparation of the Olympic Games.
Contacted, the Ministry of Sports and the Olympics did not wish to react at this stage.
Two corruption investigations
The first, opened in 2017 and entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF), concerns a series of contracts awarded “by several successive contracting authorities linked to the Olympic Games, in particular the Cojo and the GIP 2024”, the bid committee that preceded the Cojo, said the PNF.
The large modern and brown facade of the Cojo, in Saint-Denis, is not the only one to have seen the investigators parade Tuesday morning: the search also concerns the Olympic Works Delivery Company (Solideo), in the center-west of Paris and other sites, according to the PNF.
According to the PNF, these searches are indeed also carried out within the framework of a second procedure, opened in 2022 and entrusted to the BRDE, the financial brigade of the Parisian judicial police, for suspicions of illegal taking of interests, favoritism and concealment of favouritism.
It relates, according to the PNF, to several contracts awarded by the Cojo and Solideo, following an inspection by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA). According to a source familiar with the matter, this concerns “consulting contracts” on “different subjects”.
According to another source familiar with the matter, one of these two procedures is interested in potential conflicts of interest linked to Édouard Donnelly, executive director of operations of the Cojo who, previously, had been a provider of the Olympic Games via his company. RNK.
Asked by AFP, the Cojo and Solideo separately confirmed the searches and indicated that they “fully cooperate with the investigators”.
The Cojo is set up as an association under the 1901 law. The Court of Auditors closely monitors its activity and is due to publish a report very soon.
In April 2021, two AFA reports on the organization of the Olympic Games – of which AFP became aware – pointed to “risks of breaches of probity” and “conflicts of interest”, scratching the image. “exemplary” Olympics wanted by the boss of the organizing committee, Tony Estanguet.
The AFA inspectors had considered that the general procedure relating to purchases was “imprecise and incomplete”, and stressed that there were “sometimes situations of potential conflicts of interest not controlled”.
In their reports, the AFA inspectors recalled the criminal proceedings against the Presidents of the Brazilian and Japanese Olympic Committees linked to the last two Summer Games (Rio and Tokyo), and also observed that “the risks of probity are frequent in the context of major sporting events”.
Since the end of the Tokyo Olympics, several arrests and convictions have taken place. Again last May, two former officials of a corporate sponsor of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were given suspended prison sentences by the Japanese courts in connection with a corruption scandal.
Paris-2024 in turmoil
These searches are in addition to the crisis that the French Olympic movement has been going through for several months, which culminated with the resignation on May 25 of the president of the French Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), Brigitte Henriques. Cross complaints with his predecessor Denis Masseglia have been mentioned.
Rare thing: the International Olympic Committee, generally not very talkative, had even sent a call to order to its French branch, asking it to “focus” on the Paris Olympics and to “stop internal conflicts”.
On Tuesday, Franceinfo also announced that ten workers who worked without papers on the sites of the Olympic Games-2024 assigned several building giants – Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC – to the industrial tribunals of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis ) to obtain “recognition” of their work and the payment of salary arrears.
A year ago, the Bobigny prosecutor’s office had opened a preliminary investigation for “concealed work” and “employment of foreigners without title in an organized gang” after checks made it possible to identify several irregular workers on an Olympic site.
With AFP
