The approximately 300 legal representatives listed in France can legitimately be worried. Not content with being the subject of a judicial investigation entrusted to Judge Vincent Lemonier in the context of the denunciation of excesses operated by the management of the Wage Guarantee Agency (AGS), here they are placed in the crossfire of the Medef and Parliament.
Their profession is largely unknown. In charge of representing creditors during a receivership process, the legal representative ensures the payment of employees thanks to the advances granted by the AGS. He also recovers all of the company’s assets and possibly becomes its liquidator at the very end of the process. Average income of an agent: 10,000 euros monthly, knowing that a third of the profession is paid at minimum wage. There are therefore real situational benefits in the profession, with potential abuses, on the basis of collusion with the commercial courts, in particular.
Suffice to say that the agent does not have a good press. Honorary President of the National Council of Judicial Administrators and Judicial Agents, Christophe Basse is sorry, he who tells with humor that he sometimes feels, at dinners in town, when he is presented as liquidator, “in the shoes of the undertaker of Lucky Luke”. “These audit reports [commandés par la nouvelle direction]in the AGS affair, we did not see the color of it, he protests. We are talking about billions missing, and we are not given any information! We are an ultra-controlled profession, all our accounts are published and accessible. We are only paid when the file is closed. Money comes in and goes out, everything is mapped out. »
“A bottomless pit”
The president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, has some doubts: “When you have a company in receivership, there are immediately specialist lawyers who join, advice companies who will make a business plan for the court, and all these people use massively on the beast. Legal representatives, if I were a journalist, I would be interested in them, that’s for sure! Is this a healthy system? No, that’s for sure. What is the proportion of those who exaggerate their billings or who do not return the money to the AGS? I don’t damn know…”
Several parliamentary or governmental reports have been devoted to the subject. The former deputy (MoDem) of Bas-Rhin Sylvain Waserman tried to see more clearly. “There are practices that are not going at alldenounces the centrist. Failing companies are a bottomless pit, the profession must be moralized. » During his mandate (2017-2022), he worked with Brigitte Vitale, a former business leader, who is fighting with her association Aide Entreprise to change the methods in force in collective proceedings. “These agents are a clique that has been managing all bankruptcy filings for decades, she accuses. They take control of the assets of the leaders, even if all the agents are not crooks. »
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