One of the students of the SHG Lyon school, Anaïs, filed a complaint last March for fraud and breach of trust against the founder and director of this school. A hundred students from SHG Lyon each paid 22,100 euros for two years of schooling, or just over 11,000 euros per year of training, only to be unable to receive their diplomas.
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And this because of the administrative situation of the school, placed in compulsory liquidation in January 2022. The Nantes police station, where Anaïs lodged a complaint, is still conducting its investigation, according to the Nantes prosecutor’s office joined by franceinfo.
This school created five years ago by a former manager of the famous Vatel school in Switzerland, specializing in the same type of training, initially functions normally, according to Anaïs’ account. The school has premises in Lyon with classrooms and “at the beginning when we were face-to-face we had a teacher for each subject“, remembers Anaïs. Everything changes during the second confinement, at the end of October 2020.
Still according to the account of this 24-year-old student, the courses switch remotely via the internet. Nothing surprising so far, but the doubt arises when they see that a single person now teaches all the subjects: the director of the school himself. Only service providers, most often based abroad, provide foreign language learning. Asked about this, the school principal – who wishes to remain anonymous – respond : “there is no law that prohibits giving courses, I have 20 years of experience in the hotel industry. The students are delighted with the lessons I gave them“.
From there, the students, still distant from each other, begin to exchange with each other on social networks, because everyone is wondering. Between them they evoke in particular a waste of time. “It was really superficial“evokes Anaïs for her part.
“We always did the same thing, we really learned nothing to be a manager, we were really taken for babies a lot”
Anaïs, student at SHG Lyon
The student tells what her classes looked like during the two years of MBA (equivalent to the Master). “It was really a special, strange organization. All classes were repetition. We reviewed things that I had learned in bachelor’s degree. There was no added value“. In addition, still according to the students’ account, the students are mixed by level, with no specific teaching, depending on whether they are in a bachelor’s class (equivalent to the license) or in an MBA (equivalent to the Master’s). However, the director ensures for his part that the courses “are of very good quality, the students do internships in 5 star luxury hotels, we are at the top level compared to other schools. Look for a school that offers six months of lessons and six months of internship, you won’t find any”.
For their part, by dint of researching the school, the students end up finding in February that SHG Lyon has been placed in compulsory liquidation since January 12, 2022, because the school is bankrupt. Which means, in the words of the judicial liquidator appointed by the Commercial Court of Lyon, that “SHG Lyon is not authorized to continue its activity“. The students continue their exchanges and decide to hold the school principal accountable. The conversation is recorded by the students, we were able to listen to it. In the recording, the director mentions unimportant administrative problems which will be quickly settled. A story that the leader of the company holds again today. He also assures that it was he who called this meeting to warn them of the administrative problems that SHG Lyon is experiencing. The director also specifies that he has appealed and is in the process of preparing his file, which will be examined on December 1st.
“If we had been really bastards we would have closed the Lyon school”
Director of SHG Lyonfranceinfo
But last spring, students who already believe they have been defrauded by SHG Lyon are now asking questions about their internships and their diplomas. After having been asked by some of them, the judicial liquidator warns them in a letter dated April 13: “I remind you that the absence of continuation of activity prohibits since January 12, 2022 the signing of internship agreements, and the issuance of diplomas“. And above all, the judicial liquidator insists: “to my knowledge (…) [le directeur] had continued (and still continued) to give lessons. It also seems that he is trying to recruit students for the next academic year.“.
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Thus, the director of SHG Lyon, is suspected of preparing for the start of the school year at the expense of the students, while his Lyon company can no longer operate. assures him that after the placement in judicial liquidation “students transferred to other SHG schools“ and therefore can continue their education and be on internship. This entrepreneur also runs other SHG schools in several cities in France, including Paris and Nice, and also in Europe: Barcelona and Lisbon. That of Geneva in Switzerland was placed in compulsory liquidation in December 2020.
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Until the end of the school year, the director of SHG Lyon then becomes less and less reachable, according to students but also foreign language teachers, while the latter, non-salaried, claim payment of their invoices. Some have to wait nearly six months before sometimes receiving sums of up to 2,000 euros. “Students also took time to pay us, it’s the life of any company“, replies the school principal.
In the end, only one complaint was filed, that of Anaïs, on March 10. According to the Nantes prosecutor’s office, she has since been treated by the Nantes police station, the school principal assures that he has not yet been heard by the police. If the other students, some of whom were very motivated at the start to act, have finally not followed Anaïs so far, it is because, according to lawyer Hélène Rejou-Méchain “even though they are wronged, they are afraid of publicity and the impact it can have on their training“. That’s why she hopes the complaint and the police investigation “will allow other students to come out of silence to denounce these facts“. For her part, Anaïs, the student at the origin of the complaint, stopped her managerial internship and is now employed on a permanent contract as a receptionist in a Parisian hotel. Like others, she had to take out a student loan of 30,000 euros to cover her school fees.
“I was the one who chose the school and I feel bad now that my parents are helping me pay him back for a diploma that I won’t get. It’s really the worst news you can have”
Following these revelations, the lawyer for another student told franceinfo on Friday that civil proceedings were also underway against SHG, this time concerning its branch in Paris, since January. In this case, a hearing was held in Paris at the beginning of July and the decision is due on October 13. This student, who studied between 2019 and 2020 in MBA at the SHG school in Paris, paid 12,500 euros in tuition fees but also denounces a mix of levels and an internship that does not correspond to management.
His lawyer, Béatrice Cohen, put the school on notice in 2020 before assigning him to civil proceedings. The student asks to be compensated for his damages, and in particular the reimbursement of his tuition fees: “He asks for the conviction of the school for poor performance of the contract and compensation for its damages”she says.