The head of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Organizing Committee, former athlete Tony Estanguet, received an annual salary of €270,000 gross until 2020.
The president of the Organizing Committee of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Tony Estanguet, wanted an “exemplary” Olympic event, but, less than six months before its start, the French financial justice system is investigating his remuneration. A source close to the case told AFP this Tuesday that the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF, for its acronym in French) opened an investigation, which it commissioned “last week” to the judicial police. The public ministry declined to comment.
“I don’t decide on my remuneration or the form,” defended the former triple world champion in canoeing (2000, 2004, 2012), within the framework of the inauguration of the Annette Kellerman swimming pool in La Courneuve, on the outskirts of Paris. “I trust what was decided at the time” when he assumed his duties in 2018, he assured the journalists who came to ask him.
“The system that was decided at the time was that I could not be salaried and that it was necessary to create an ‘ad hoc’ structure that invoiced the organizing committee every month,” he added. “The organizing committee is astonished to discover this information,” the organizing committee reacted, for its part, assuring that the remuneration of its president “is regulated very strictly.”
Until 2020, Estanguet earned 270,000 gross euros ($290,200), according to figures reported by the COJOP in 2018, a remuneration that could fluctuate by 20% depending on certain objectives.. The committee indicated this Tuesday that its leaders “are not subject” to a maximum remuneration limit, after the authorities confirmed its lucrative nature, despite the fact that its legal statute is the one usually used by non-profit associations.
The organizing committee also specified that its boss was not one of its employees, due to his mandate as president and after consulting with Social Security. “It was not possible,” summarized the deputy general manager Michaël Aloiso. The solution found was to apply the “independent worker” regime, indicated Blandine Sorbe, former magistrate of the Court of Auditors and delegate director of the organizing committee.
French Anti-Corruption Agency suspects
Estanguet He thus receives his remuneration in the form of non-commercial benefits, through a company he has created. “The first board of directors of the organization committee decided and validated on March 2, 2018 the remuneration of Tony Estanguetin his absence, in a sovereign and independent manner,” indicated the organizing committee.
The amount was decided on the proposal of a “remuneration committee” made up of “independent experts”, and the general economic and financial controller of the State validated the “payment modalities” after consulting with Social Security, this source specified.
“The amount of the invoices inherent to this remuneration is the subject of an annual audit” by an internal unit and “independent of the executive of the organizing committee” and of “an examination by the remuneration committee”, for a “desire for transparency “, noted the instance.
At the beginning of 2021, two reports from the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA) on the organization of the Olympic Games pointed out “risks” of lack of probity and “conflict of interest”. In one of these reports, the AFA mentioned the case of the Estanguet company as an “atypical setup” that “is not without difficulties,” recalled a recent article in the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné.
The French justice system has opened three other financial investigations into the organization of the Olympic Games due to suspicions of favoritism and embezzlement of funds in the awarding of contracts. The issue of the remuneration of the main leaders of the organizing committee of the Games was already controversial in 2017, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the Olympic event to Paris in Lima.
Le Canard Enchaîné then reported a salary of 450,000 euros per year ($483,000) for Tony Estanguetwhich the triple Olympic champion quickly denied.
Source: Ambito
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