Florence Hardouin and her relatives dreaded this moment. Monday afternoon, January 30, the director general of the French Football Federation (FFF), 56, received by email the version of the provisional audit report from the general inspectorate for education, sport and research (IGESR) that concerns it. If we do not know at this stage the details of the parts transmitted to Mme Hardouin, one can imagine that the person concerned must have been relieved in the light of the content of the 32-page copy sent to the executive committee of the FFF, of which The world took cognizance.
Pinpointed several times by the inspection mission carried out by the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, Florence Hardouin, appointed “DG” of the FFF in 2013, was relatively spared by the auditors in comparison with its president, Noël Le Graët, exhausted for “ his behavior towards women, his public statements and the failures of the governance of the FFF”.
Laid off on January 11 as a precaution by the executive committee of the FFF, summoned on February 21 for an interview prior to a possible dismissal for “serious misconduct”, Florence Hardouin is certainly targeted for her “displaced authoritarianism”, in line with the conclusions of the internal report commissioned by Noël Le Graët, in 2020, with the consulting firm Plein sens. But the IGESR asserts that, “if his management can be described as brutal, there is no reason to qualify it as harassing”. “The management of the general manager has apparently relaxed”, also specify the listeners. The inspection mission did not, moreover, take legal action concerning Mr.me Hardouin, under article 40 of the code of criminal procedure, while she did so for Mr. Le Graët.
The alleged “leniency” of the IGESR with regard to Mme Hardouin and his decision not to issue a report to the Paris prosecutor’s office about the DG shocked several former employees of the FFF. The latter retain a very bad memory of the management style of M.me Hardouin or consider she has ” covered ” Mr. Le Graët in an interested manner, despite the many reports she would have received from collaborators concerning the inappropriate behavior of the president towards them.
Directress bypassed
The listeners paint the portrait of a DG who, “despite a considerable professional investment, takes little interest in certain areas of the FFF (the specificities of the public service mission, amateur football, training for example) “. For many people interviewed, it would be “impermeable to the singularity of federal governance which is based on respect for the role of elected officials, active volunteers, licensees”. According to the auditors, Mme Hardouin “struggles to extract herself from a personality that she recognizes as directive”.
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