Six executives of the Vinci group have been summoned by the courts, some of whom are in police custody, franceinfo has learned. The construction giant is suspected of modern slavery during preparatory projects for the last football world championship in Qatar. Vinci’s lawyers denounce “an empty file”.
It’s a plaster that has stuck to the feet of construction giant Vinci for more than 8 years. After the indictment last year of its branch Vinci Construction Grands Projets (VCGP) for facts related to modern slavery of its workers in Qatar, six executives of the group are summoned next Wednesday by investigators, franceinfo has learned from consistent sources, Wednesday September 13. Among the people expected in the premises of the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Illegal Work (OCLTI), three of them will be questioned under police custody with the prospect of possible indictment. Executives of the group had already been questioned in this affair. The group’s headquarters in Rueil-Malmaison was also searched in December 2020.
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By putting pressure on the actors in this case, the two investigating judges who are investigating Vinci’s construction activity in Nanterre during the preparatory projects for the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar are undoubtedly hoping to deliver a blow of accelerator to this instruction difficult to materialize. In the judges’ sights, the VCGP branch and Qatari Diar Vinci Construction (QDVC), a Vinci subsidiary 51% owned by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund. For more than eight years, the Vinci group has rejected all accusations of forced labor and human trafficking launched by the activist association Sherpa and the Committee Against Modern Slavery (CCEM). The group even considers itself to be a pioneer in terms of human rights and respect for local labor law for its workers in Qatar.
A file “empty of proof”, Vinci defends
Supporting photos, videos and written testimonies, Sherpa has nevertheless taken legal action in France several times to denounce the unworthy working conditions of migrant workers employed by Vinci in Qatar. Sherpa thus accuses QDVC of having recruited, employed and housed migrant workers in inhumane conditions to meet delivery deadlines on several of its projects, including the light rail linking Doha to Lusail. Sherpa also suspects the managers of the Vinci subsidiary of having deprived some of these workers of passports to ensure their availability, which the group refutes. After an initial classification without follow-up, the Sherpa association, the Committee against modern slavery (CCEM) and twelve immigrant workers (Indian, Nepalese) filed a complaint with the constitution of a civil party before the French justice system, triggering the opening of a judicial investigation in 2019.
“If the information is confirmed, it’s good news”explains Laura Bourgeois, content managerissues and advocacy to Sherpa.
“This means that the investigation is progressing. The hearing of senior executives of VCGP should make it possible to identify more precisely the potential involvement of VCGP in the facts denounced by the workers. It does not appear serious to question the independence of the investigating judges and the rigor of their years of investigation. Moreover, faced with a company ‘of this size’, the judges probably had to take extra precautions”
Laura Bourgeois, litigation and advocacy officer at Sherpaat franceinfo
For Jean-Pierre Versini, who defends the Vinci group, these scheduled summons and police custody are completely unjustified. They are based on a file that the lawyer considers “empty of evidence” And “oriented”. “We dispute all these testimonies, ton Jean-Pierre Versini who filed last May a request for nullity against the indictment of VCGP. For eight years, the authorities have been trying to hear from these workers, but they have not heard from any of the complainants on these construction sites. None of the twelve workers out of thousands of employees! All of this is insufficient to send a company of this size to prison. Eight years of investigation and we still haven’t decided whether Vinci was a serious business or a slave trader. It’s too long and nothing is proven in this case.”
The question of the legal validity, the number and the reality of the testimonies at the origin of the complaint is one of the issues of this file. According to information from franceinfo, the Sherpa association was heard at the end of June precisely to help investigators who are struggling to find and interview for the first time the Indian and Nepalese migrant workers who incriminate Vinci. During this hearing before the investigating judges, Sherpa’s legal representative affirmed that the complainants are willing to participate in the investigation, but she also recognized the difficulty in finding new testimonies.