The State’s complaint against Orpea “is a fundamental step” reacts on Saturday March 26 on franceinfo the independent journalist who revealed the scandal in the group’s Ehpad at the end of January through a book entitled The Gravediggers. Victor Castanet accused Orpea of having created a system for optimizing the profits of nursing homes, to the detriment of residents and employees. The Minister Delegate for the Autonomy of the Elderly Brigitte Bourguignon announced on Saturday morning on France Inter that the State was going to file a complaint against Orpéa and reserved the right to request “the return of unused public funds”. According to Victor Castanet, Orpea diverted “several tens of millions of euros”sums “very impressive”.
franceinfo: Is this state complaint against Orpea a good signal?
Victor Castanet: For all the families who accompanied this survey, for all the employees above all who told me about these financial practices to the detriment of public money who have been trying to warn for years about these practices which have a direct impact on the reality of taking charge, that the State today notices these dysfunctions, confirms the revelations of this book and decides to take legal action is a fundamental step. Tomorrow, justice will have the means to investigate, to know exactly the extent of these practices, the amounts that will have been captured from public money.
“You have to know exactly where it went and who it benefited: is it the group? Is it a small number of leaders?
Victor Castanet, journalist, author of “Les Fossoyeurs”at franceinfo
It is fundamental because it is public money and because it was done at the expense of care.
The state will also ask Orpea to return misused public grants. The Minister Delegate for the Autonomy of the Elderly, Brigitte Bourguignon, speaks of “several million euros”. Is it like that, do you think?
It’s not several million euros, it’s several tens of millions of euros. Justice will say how far it can go back in time, but the sums will be very impressive. In this report which has not actually been published by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) and the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF), the sum of 20 million euros is mentioned for the surpluses of endowment between 2017 and 2020, that is to say the sums which have been allocated to this group and which have not been used because the group has cut back on nursing posts financed by public money, so these 20 million euros were not used. There are also 18 million euros which relate to the “rear margins”, that is to say the money which was paid by the group’s suppliers, paid by public money. There are also 50 million euros on what are called “performing functions”, that is to say positions which should have been paid from the group’s private funds and which in fact were paid with the public money. So there are plenty of practices. This report evokes almost a hundred million euros between 2017 and 2020 but I think that the investigations of justice will make it possible to determine other amounts.
The government ultimately decided not to make the IGAS and IGF report public. Are you surprised?
Yes of course. Employees, families and elected officials are surprised because we have been told the opposite for several days. Olivier Véran and Brigitte Bourguignon have said on several occasions that this report would be made public except for exceptions covered by business secrecy. This poses a real problem because this notion of business secrecy – which is a very vague notion – prevented me for three years from making progress in my investigation. The regional health agencies, the French administration, brandished this argument of business secrecy at me. If I had to stop at that, my investigation would never have gone to the end, this information would never have been made public, so this business secret poses a real problem. If I was able to go all the way it is because the departmental councils decided to give me documents and considered that it was public money and that the French should have this information. So that this report is not published is a disappointment.
“This notion of business secrecy is done to the detriment of the general interest and at the service of a private group.”
Victor Castanetat franceinfo
We are talking about financial practices that have been put in place with public money, that is to say with the money of all French people. By what right would we hide information on a questionable use of French money? That is something that is difficult to hear.