A former director of a Marseille mixed economy company in court for embezzlement of public funds

A former director of a semi-public company, a retired real estate expert and the boss of a major cleaning company, suspected of having colluded to overvalue compensation for eviction from land where the municipality wanted build an ice rink, are judged until Friday January 26 in Marseille.

In 2004, the town hall wanted to work hard to build a snow sports palace to be inaugurated before the 2008 elections.

But the project faces resistance from Philippe Lasery, president of the company Laser Propreté, holder of a precarious occupation authorization on Réseau Ferré de France land. Marseille Aménagement, the mixed economy company (SEM) responsible for city projects, bought these 15.000 square meters in 2003 in the context of a ZAC (concerted development zone) in the heart of the Capelette district.

In December 2013, the Regional Chamber of Accounts alerted the Marseille public prosecutor's office to the conditions for signing, on August 4, 2004, a transactional protocol between Marseille Aménagement and Laser Propreté setting the eviction compensation at 2.068.061 euros. On May 4, the director of the SEM, Charles Boumendil, former member of Jean-Claude Gaudin's cabinet, had nevertheless received an assessment of this compensation set by the Estates at 153.200 euros.

Under “obscure conditions”, according to the president of the court Stéphanie Donjon, both parties had recourse to an expert. Tried for complicity in embezzlement of public funds but absent from the trial due to health problems, the expert assured that he had never been aware of the evaluation of the Estates and did not question the nature of the lease - commercial type, therefore more favorable to the company - linking the company Laser Propreté to Marseille Aménagement.

At the court, Philippe Lasery, prosecuted for concealment of embezzlement of public funds, claims to have accepted it "to please the mayor's office". “There was an emergency, there were the elections in 2008 and I was told that I was almost blocking the re-election of Mr. Gaudin,” explained the business manager, holder of contracts with the city.

Charles Boumendil, the director of Marseille Aménagement to whom the investigating judge, who closed this old case in February 2022, accuses of having "impoverished the community by agreeing to pay transactional compensation twelve times higher than that indicated by the services of the State", has always defended itself from a behind-the-scenes arrangement.

In October 2021, the Marseille prosecutor's office requested dismissal of the case in favor of the three defendants for "insufficient charges".