Director fired at time of corruption case sues group

Altice headquarters in Lisbon, July 24, 2023.

On July 13, 2023, SFR, the main French subsidiary of Altice, Patrick Drahi’s group, was shocked. Employees of the telecom operator had just learned of the arrest in Portugal of Armando Pereira, the businessman’s long-standing partner, for alleged financial misdeeds. An internal investigation was quickly opened. For its needs, senior executives were asked to hand over their work computers and telephones. This is what Tatiana Agova-Bregou, the executive director in charge of audiovisual content at SFR, did on July 20, the day before she was due to leave for vacation in Bulgaria, her country of birth.

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But, eleven days later, on July 31, Altice France notified her of an exemption from activity, suspended her access to the company’s networks and offices and sent her letters of resignation from her corporate mandates for her to sign before August 2. Having received no response by this date, management revoked her from all her corporate mandates for “objective disturbance characterized by the proper functioning of the company”. At issue: the intimate relationship that Mme Agova-Bregou has a relationship with Mr. Pereira, revealed by telephone tapping carried out by the Portuguese justice system, including Excerpts were published on July 26 by the newspaper Saturday.

As scandal rocks Patrick Drahi’s empire, the group must make heads roll.me Agova-Bregou was the first to be affected at SFR. Her dismissal was communicated to employees on August 2, during a central works council meeting, then quickly picked up by the media. “At this date, she is the only employee of Altice France suspended”indicates the minutes of the central works council held that day. In the following weeks, about fifteen executives would leave the company, dismissed or discreetly forced to resign, most of them because of their proximity or family ties to Mr. Pereira.

Since then, the woman who began her career in January 2010 at Numericable, one of Patrick Drahi’s first companies, before climbing the ladder, has vigorously contested her dismissal. A first procedure was launched in June 2024 before the industrial tribunal, then a second, more recent, before the Paris commercial court. According to information from WorldMme On August 14, Agova-Bregou sued the companies SFR Presse Distribution and Sportscotv, the two subsidiaries of the operator of which it was a corporate officer, for “abusive dismissal, in brutal and vexatious circumstances undermining his reputation and without respect for the principle of adversarial proceedings”.

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