But who is it ? Mocked on TikTok, trending on Twitter, wordy on YouTube: these days, former tech guru Osama Ammar, 36, is a must-have on social media. Whether it’s to show off his golden life in Dubai or his mansion in Normandy, chatting about bitcoin or polyamory, the ex-director of the incubator The Family likes to tell his story through videos. It’s hard to imagine, seeing him so happy, that the Franco-Lebanese entrepreneur is being sued by his former associates, who suspect him of having embezzled 4.5 million euros.
“Following the filing of a complaint by my clients in March 2022, it was confirmed to me that an investigation was underway at the astute delinquency repression brigadespecifies the lawyer of The Family, Ivan Terel, of the firm GKA & associates. We also filed a complaint with civil action in January 2023, again for acts of breach of trust, forgery and use of forgery. » “I don’t think I’m a crook, rightly or wrongly, defends the person concerned in a podcast broadcast on February 3, 2023. Every time I’ve juggled with money, it’s called entrepreneurial creativity. »
It looks like a quarrel of associates like so many others but, here it is, it touches a symbol of triumphant French Tech and the ” teacher “ adored by a generation of start-upers. Created in 2013, The Family had become one of the main incubators of innovative French companies (120 start-ups in the portfolio), with among its foals PayFit (payroll management), Doctrine (legal information) or Algolia (software) . When, in July 2015, Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of the Economy, received his British counterpart, George Osborne, he took him under the trendy glass roof of The Family, in the Marais district of Paris.
Successful beginnings
From now on, the “family” is torn apart, in general embarrassment. Investors in The Family galaxy solicited by The world demanded that their name not appear. It must be said that the ongoing legal tussle shines the spotlight on the lackluster scullery of the “start-up nation”. We discover a magma of holding companies registered in Estonia or Luxembourg, which transfer hundreds of thousands of euros to the Cayman Islands like others buy a lottery ticket.
The main misappropriations of which Osama Ammar is suspected relate to capital raised to invest in Airbnb or SpaceX, not really tricolor unicorns. Revenge of the “brick and mortar”? The missing millions would have finally been used to build the famous mansion of the businessman in Normandy…
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