Less than two weeks before the launch of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a subsidiary of the Vinci group which carried out projects in the country was indicted on Wednesday, November 9, as part of an investigation into the conditions of work of employees on certain sites related to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Vinci Constructions Grands Projets (VCGP) was indicted by an investigating judge in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) on charges of “submission to working or accommodation conditions incompatible with dignity”, of ” obtaining the supply of a person in a situation of vulnerability or dependence of services, with an unrelated remuneration “and “reduction in servitude”, informed the parquet floor of Nanterre.
When summoned before the investigating judge, the representative of the French construction group “limited to expressing a protest relating to the insufficient time granted to the lawyers to elaborate the useful answers and the untimely choice of the date a few days before the opening of the Football World Cup”said his counsel, Mr.e Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi.
VCGP “will immediately file an appeal seeking to have the Versailles investigating chamber declare the nullity of this indictment”, warned the lawyer, due in particular to an offense referred to which did not exist in the penal code at the time of the alleged facts. The magistrate, however, “reduces the period of prevention” of this offense for this reason, explained the lawyer.
Monday, announcing in a press release its future summons by French justice, the French construction group had denied the accusations of “forced labor” and “trafficking in human beings” on its Qatari construction sites. He also declared that he had not built any stadiums or hotels for the World Cup, affirming that his projects focused “basically on transport infrastructure”.
” You can be [tenus] responsible for what happens in your subsidiaries”
The file dates back to 2015, and a first complaint was dismissed in 2018. But complaints from the Sherpa and Committee against Modern Slavery (CCEM) associations, as well as from seven former Indian and Nepalese employees of these sites, led to the opening of an investigation by an investigating judge in November 2019. The plaintiffs accuse Vinci, Vinci construction grands projets (VCGP), its Qatari subsidiary diar Vinci construction (QDVC) and their representatives, of “reduction in servitude , trafficking in human beings, work incompatible with human dignity, deliberate endangerment, involuntary injuries and concealment”.
“We welcome this indictment. This is the first time that a parent company has been indicted on these grounds for the activities of one of its branches abroad. The magistrate sends a strong signal for economic actors: “You can be [tenus] responsible for what happens in your subsidiaries” »rejoiced Wednesday Sandra Cossart, director of Sherpa France.
And to add that it is “a strong signal from the judicial institution” because “It’s not nothing, in France, to attack a CAC40 company”. But “It’s not a victory, because it’s only an indictment, the investigation continues”she clarified.
Three construction sites
To organize the football competition, Qatar has entrusted the materialization of gigantic construction works (stadiums, roads, hotels, etc.) to an army of migrant workers. From the first blows of the pickaxe, NGOs denounced the working conditions imposed on these workers.
Three Vinci projects are decried by these complainants: that of the “light metro” linking Doha to Lusail, a new city which will host the final of the Football World Cup; that of the Lusail underground car parks; as well as those of the construction site of the luxury Sheraton hotel, in the heart of Doha.
According to testimonies from plaintiffs collected by Sherpa, that The world was able to consult in November 2018, the workers worked up to seventy-seven hours a week in temperatures between 40 and 50 degrees, for very low pay. “Because of the heat and humidity, I saw people throwing up, and falling like that on the ground”, said one of them. The witnesses also mentioned the confiscation of passports, but also having been crammed into cramped rooms with insufficient sanitary facilities and threatened with dismissal or return to their country in the event of claims.
An audit carried out in January 2019 by several trade union organizations (CGT, CFDT and CFE-CGC) within Vinci’s Qatari activities nevertheless concluded that there are good practices on site in terms of employment. The director of the NGO Sherpa believes, however, that if there have been “voluntary improvements (…), it does not clear the company of the reprehensible actions that would have been committed between 2011 and 2014”.