Construction sites in Qatar: a subsidiary of Vinci summoned by the French justice "with a view to a possible indictment"

The newspaper Le Parisien had reported on Sunday that such a summons would take place on Wednesday by an examining magistrate from Nanterre.

The group writes to regret that "its subsidiary is the subject of an indictment", anticipating a decision which belongs to the judge on Wednesday. The French company says it refute the accusations, in particular of "forced labor" and "trafficking in human beings", two weeks before the opening of the Mondial-2022.

The file dates back to 2015, and a first complaint was dismissed in 2018. But complaints from the Sherpa and Committee against Modern Slavery (CCEM) associations, as well as from seven former Indian and Nepalese employees of these sites, led to the opening of an investigation by an investigating judge in November 2019.

Three sites are decried by these plaintiffs: that of the "light metro" rallying Doha to Lusail, a new city which will host the final of the Football World Cup; that of the Lusail underground car parks; as well as those of the construction site of the luxury Sheraton hotel, in the heart of Doha.

The plaintiffs accuse Vinci, Vinci Construction Grands Projets (VCGP), its Qatari subsidiary Diar Vinci Construction (QDVC) and their representatives, of "reduction into servitude, trafficking in human beings, work incompatible with human dignity, deliberate endangerment, injuries involuntary and concealment" in particular, according to the complaint consulted by AFP in 2020.

Vinci "has continued to vigorously refute the allegations made against it concerning construction sites in Qatar carried out by the company QDVC" and "will continue to collaborate with justice", explains the group on Monday in its press release.

Migrant workers

To organize the football competition, Qatar has entrusted the materialization of gigantic construction works (stadiums, roads, hotels, etc.) to an army of migrant workers. From the first blows of the pickaxe, NGOs denounced the working conditions imposed on these workers.

According to testimonies collected at the time by the NGO Sherpa, immigrant employees of Vinci on certain construction sites said they had worked, passports confiscated, between 66 and 77 hours a week. And they would have been crammed into cramped rooms with insufficient sanitary facilities, receiving remuneration unrelated to the work provided, threatened with dismissal or dismissal in their country in the event of claims.

"None of the projects awarded to QDVC is related to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar" and they were "awarded (...) before the organization of this competition was awarded" (in 2010) to this rich Gulf emirate, says Vinci. He recalls that the projects focused "essentially on transport infrastructure".

An audit carried out in January 2019 by several trade union organizations (CGT, CFDT and CFE-CGC) within Vinci's Qatari activities nevertheless concluded that there are good practices on site in terms of employment.

"We tried in vain to convince the magistrate that it was not particularly appropriate after seven and a half years of investigation to consider an indictment in the opening fortnight of the Football World Cup", reacted Monday with AFP the lawyer of Vinci Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, who fears "a media tumult".

"If an indictment were pronounced against Vinci, this would confirm that multinationals are finding it increasingly difficult to hide behind value chains, the fact that it would be + too complicated + to act, and would remind us that legally , voluntary measures of improvement do not make it possible to escape the risk of penal sanction in the event of suspicion of infringement”, retains for its part the NGO Sherpa.