Fugitive employer sentenced to one year in prison after the death of two undocumented workers

The manager of a construction company, currently on the run in Egypt, was sentenced Tuesday in Bobigny to one year in prison, nearly four years after the death of two undocumented workers on a construction site in Seine-Saint-Denis .

Four other men were sentenced to terms of up to three years in prison, including six months.

“Anchor fault”

The convicted persons and their companies will have to jointly pay 50,000 euros to each of the families of the deceased, in compensation for moral damage. On June 8, 2019, the two victims, Kamel Benstaali, 34, and Omar Azzouz, 29, were working on the rehabilitation of the La Source housing estate in Épinay-sur-Seine, a 478-unit housing project whose lessor is Plaine Commune Habitat .

Recruited shortly before the tragedy, they were working on the thermal renovation, from the outside, of the 18th floor of a building when the nacelle on which they were was detached. Neither was trained to work at height. An expert report then pointed out “a lack of anchorageof the platform.

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The two victims had been hired by the subcontracting company SRI whose Egyptian manager, Fathy Abou Shreef, on the run in his country, was sentenced to one year in prison, with an arrest warrant which was issued. His right-hand man Hafid Biyi was sentenced to three years in prison, including six months and a ban on running a business for ten years.

Bad work conditions

They were found partially guilty of intentional homicide and concealed work. “This is a balanced decision in relation to the prosecutor’s submissions“, estimated Me Jean-Philippe Feldman, lawyer of the two families of the victims, at the exit of the courtroom. The public prosecutor had requested sentences of up to eight months in prison.

The lawsuit, at the end of January, had highlighted the poor working conditions of the employees of the subcontracting as well as the multitude of companies involved and the complexity of defining the responsibilities at the end of the chain. The person responsible for verifying the installations was sentenced to two years in prison, including six months in prison. The manager of the company Technimat which installed the scaffolding of the site is sentenced to 18 months in prison suspended and his company to a fine of 30,000 euros.

Another subcontractor in the case, ISO Systèmes, was sentenced to a fine of 45,000 euros and its manager to a one-year suspended prison sentence and the obligation to publish the sentence on their site for one month. CGT construction, civil party, obtained 5000 euros in damages.