This is a hard blow for the woman who claimed to have revealed the scandal of companies in difficulty. Tuesday, November 7, Houria Aouimeur, the former national director of the AGS salary guarantee scheme, had all her requests rejected by the Paris industrial tribunal. She requested, in particular, the status of whistleblower in a case of embezzlement, but the judges, seized in summary proceedings, refused to grant her her case.
This decision constitutes a new twist in a particularly complex drawer file. It all started in the fall of 2018, when Mme Aouimeur takes the reins of the AGS regime, a social protection organization with very atypical functioning. It allows employees of failing or liquidated companies to continue to be paid. The money is made available to judicial agents who then redistribute it to the workers concerned. The system is governed by an employers’ association, while being attached to Unédic, the joint association which manages unemployment insurance.
At the beginning of 2019, an audit carried out by the E & Y firm, at the request of Mme Aouimeur, just after his recruitment to the AGS, revealed anomalies likely to call into question the predecessor of the national director (favoritism towards a company of lawyers and communications service providers, etc.). Complaints were filed in March 2019, in particular by Medef and Unédic, for “active and passive corruption, illegal taking of interest”…
Over the months, suspicions spread to other protagonists – in particular to administrators and legal representatives who would have been involved in fraudulent maneuvers with the former team at the head of the AGS. A second series of complaints was filed, at the end of 2019, for “breach of trust, forgery and use of forgeries”… At the same time, Mme Aouimeur entrusts another audit to the Advolis firm, which questions the use of several billion euros having passed through the hands of legal agents between 2013 and 2018.
The file is not closed
The affair takes on a new dimension when Unédic – the employer of the AGS scheme staff, therefore of Mme Aouimeur – is interested in “mission, reception and travel expenses” of the national director and her close collaborators. A first ” assessment “ highlights very high expenses: restaurant bills, taxi fares, etc. Another expertise – from the PwC firm – reaches similar findings while pointing out contracts and markets concluded with service providers under irregular conditions. Because of all these “failures”Unédic – who is the boss of Mme Aouimeur – decides to fire her, in February, for ” heavy mistake “.
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