PARIS (Agefi-Dow Jones)–Orpea’s Director General France, Jean-Christophe Romersi, was summoned on February 1 by the Minister Delegate in charge of Autonomy, Brigitte Bourguignon, following the publication of the book – “Les Fossoyeurs” investigation, which contains accusations of bad practices in establishments managed by the operator of retirement homes.
“Committed to ensuring that you can respond to these serious accusations, I would like to hear from you during an interview at my ministry on Tuesday, February 1 at 9:15 a.m.”, wrote Brigitte Bourguignon in a letter addressed this Thursday to the leader and published on the ministry website.
This interview, at the request of the Minister of Solidarity and Health, Olivier Véran, will be “an opportunity to hear the explanations of the Orpea group on several points which will be the subject of in-depth investigations by the State services” , continued Brigitte Bourguignon.
These points concern in particular the group’s practices in terms of “allocation to establishments of consumables such as sanitary protection” as well as “issues related to the nutrition of residents”. The Minister also wishes to obtain details on the “managerial practices of the group concerning the personnel” as well as on the “methods of reporting and monitoring the acts of mistreatment reported by the relatives of the residents”.
In addition, the minister asks in this letter for explanations on the “financial practices of the group in terms of management of ‘care’ and ‘dependency’ allocations and the sincerity of the financial information delivered to the supervisory authorities”.
Brigitte Bourguignon added that she reserved “the right to initiate an investigation by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs on all or part of the establishments” of the group following this interview.
Around 12:10 p.m., Orpea shares lost 8.2%, to 40.10 euros, after having already lost 47% since the start of the week. The Orpea share has fallen since the publication on Monday by the daily Le Monde of extracts from the book-investigation “Les Fossoyeurs”. The operator of retirement homes strongly denied the accusations contained in this work, considering them to be “false, outrageous and prejudicial”.
On Wednesday evening, Orpea announced that its board of directors had decided to “immediately” mandate two “recognized” firms to entrust them with an independent assessment mission on all the allegations reported in the book-investigation.
“These two firms will have access to all the information from Orpea and its establishments that they deem necessary,” the group said in a press release. “Their names will be communicated in the coming days”, added the operator of retirement homes, specifying that they will present their conclusions to the board of directors “as soon as possible”.
“These conclusions will also be made available to the competent authorities and will be the subject of a communication,” said Orpea. “We continue to affirm that at no time did the group’s management put in place any system to orchestrate the practices of which it is accused,” commented Orpea.
-Alice Doré, Agefi-Dow Jones; +33 (0)1 41 27 47 90; [email protected] ed: LBO
(Eric Chalmet contributed to this article)
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January 27, 2022 06:16 ET (11:16 GMT)