He is also sentenced to pay a fine of 15,000 euros. He had been sentenced at first instance to one year in prison, including eight months suspended.
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Didier Lombard, the group’s former CEO, was given a one-year suspended prison sentence on appeal and a fine of 15,000 euros for institutional moral harassment after a wave of suicides in the company, according to the journalist who followed the trial for franceinfo. It is a less severe sentence than at first instance, where he was sentenced to one year in prison, including 8 months suspended in 2019.
On appeal, the sentences are also reduced for several former managers of France Telecom: Louis-Pierre Wenès, former number 2 of France Telecom, is sentenced, for institutional moral harassment to the same penalty as Didier Lombard, one year of imprisonment suspended sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros. Brigitte Dumont, former executive, receives 6 months in prison for complicity, suspended sentence, without fine. Nathalie Boulanger, a former executive, is sentenced to 3 months’ imprisonment for complicity, with a simple suspended sentence, without fine. At first instance, these former leaders were given a four-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 5,000 euros.
During the appeal trial, which took place between May and July 2022, the prosecution indicated that Didier Lombard and Louis-Pierre Wenès had “designed and implemented“a policy of”industrial, collective and methodical moral harassment“, by means of “prohibited methods“, which resulted in a “degradation of working conditions” of “thousands of employees“, some of whom have committed suicide.
During 2006, the management of France Telecom, privatized two years earlier, had implemented a policy aimed at 22,000 departures and 10,000 transfers via two plans from 2007 to 2010, the period to which the trial relates. During the trial, the cases of 39 employees were examined: 19 ended their lives, 12 attempted to do so and eight experienced an episode of depression or a work stoppage over the period 2007-2010.