“Orpea is the tree that hides the forest, there is also Korian and Domusvi, it’s white cap and white cap”, declared Tuesday April 5 on franceinfo master Fabien Arakelian. The government published on Tuesday the administrative investigation report which it commissioned in February on Orpea and which it had until then refused to make public. “due to business law” . This report points to serious dysfunctions within the private Ehpad group. “We have all the ingredients for a real public health scandal”believes Fabien Arakelian who is a lawyer at the Hauts-de-Seine bar and who represents several complainant families
franceinfo: Are these conclusions in line with the families you are defending?
Fabien Arakelian: Totally, this is the observation that we have been making for many months, not to say years. All that is mentioned in this report is what already appears in our complaints and which is on the desk of many public prosecutors throughout France.
Beyond the mistreatment, there is also the financial problem. What about?
We have all the ingredients for a real public health scandal, mistreatment, financial documents which we have just been told are insincere, degraded human resources management. In this report, we come to expand and tell us that all of this can be seen in the more generally nursing home sector. Orpea is the tree that hides the forest since with Orpea there is also Korian and Domusvi. It’s white beanie and white beanie.
Have your customers filed a complaint?
Absolutely, we currently have close to sixty complaints that are filed with openings of judicial information, preliminary investigation. We hope that all this will accelerate in the coming weeks to lead, why not, to the first indictments. I hope that now everyone will become aware of all this, that we are not agitated because we are in an election campaign and that justice is seriously getting to work.
Could tragedies have been avoided?
We talk about malnutrition, dehydration, we talk about elderly people who have been discovered, and it is written in particular by the firefighters of Paris, unconscious in their bed without having been seen since the night before. All this to save money. Today, all this is established by the largest institutions of the State, a ministry which comes to make these observations. These are still establishments and companies that live handsomely on public grants.
Are you still receiving new files?
Everyday. Beyond the families, there are also the employees of these establishments who come forward. Speech is released. Employees come forward because they realize that all this is moving in the right direction. They risk being prosecuted but we will make the accounts between the whistleblower and the one who gives the orders. We need in these procedures people who come to attest to what was at stake in these establishments.