At Orpea clean-up at the top and attempted financial rescue

In front of the basket of croissants on the buffet set up on Thursday 28th July for the Annual General Meeting of Orpea Shareholders on the 17th^e district of Paris, one participant suddenly recalled that the date corresponded to the anniversary of a disastrous decision. In a letter sent to Victor Castanet a year earlier, the management of the European giant of retirement homes and commercial clinics had replied “to hurt” from “can’t go on” to the 56 questions the journalist had sent him before the end of the three-year investigation, intended to uncover the misappropriation of public funds and serious abuse. “Big mistake”, this good connoisseur of the file regretted on Thursday. The end of the impermissibility of the siege appeared as the will to smother the truth.

Since the publication of the book by M. Castanet The gravediggers (Fayard, 400 pages, 22.90 euros) sold 160,000 copies, Orpea remained convinced that in the face of disclosures of these abuses, any attempt to defend himself “ incomprehensible”.

The general assembly held on Thursday should mark the end of the quilt strategy. The ritual appointment with the shareholders was represented as a “Exercise of Democracy” – show the desire, “ change everything from floor to ceiling”, sums up an expert in the industry.

Turn your staff upside down

A “startup” which starts with a household at the top. This was announced by the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Philippe Charrier, in front of the few hundred shareholders present“about fifteen guides” from Orpea Headquarters had been fired or were about to be fired. At the helm of the company, which has been in turmoil since the sacking of its chief executive, Yves le Masne, in January, Mr Charrier willingly played ‘Mister Clean’. “A core group of senior executives had put in place an obfuscation system that covered up wrongdoing. The co-leaders were not informed about this. » Mr Charrier insisted: “ All persons who left our company through gross negligence left without compensation. » In addition, Orpea has filed a complaint against X and launched an investigation by the public prosecutor’s office into alleged financial crimes by certain managers.

After the upheaval in the staff, Orpea went in search of new blood. The management of the group was appointed on 01.01^ah July, to Laurent Guillot. Former deputy general manager of Saint-Gobain, this 52-year-old polytechnic agreed to become number one with a desire to surround himself with him “new talent” who, like him, do not come from the medical-social seraglio. “ It’s time to integrate skills that not only came from healing, but were trained first in the right houses, the best groups.”, he explained.

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