The headquarters of the Organizing Committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is being searched by the police, the organizers reported Tuesday, without giving details about the reasons for the investigation. "A search is currently underway at the headquarters of the Organizing Committee," the Olympic body said in a statement sent to Reuters, which said it was "fully cooperating with the investigators."
The investigation responds to suspicions of corruption, according to the office of the financial prosecutor, reported AP. An official said the record is linked to two investigations based on information provided by an anti-corruption agency. The official was not authorized to be named publicly in accordance with the prosecutor's office policy.
On the other hand, shortly after the Olympic communiqué, the French news agency AFP reported that ten workers of African origin who worked without papers in the construction sites of the Olympic Games in Paris have sued several construction giants to obtain , among other things, the "recognition" of their work.
The summons before the labor court (labor dispute tribunal) points to four giants in the sector, Vinci, Eiffage, Spie Batignolles and GCC, the main contractors of the future Olympic venues, but also to eight subcontractors who directly employed these African workers, many of them Mali.
The ten workers, already regularized, who for several months have been denouncing their "exploitation" in these works in which they worked without an employment contract or payroll, are asking for "the recognition of an employment contract," trade unionist Richard Bloch told AFP. , who accompanied them in their regularization process.
In the file presented on March 31, the union and the workers also demand the payment of unpaid wages, the recognition of a "dismissal without real and serious cause", and that "the responsibility of the employers" in an irregular work.
A year ago, the Bobigny public prosecutor's office, near Paris, opened a preliminary investigation, in particular for "undercover work" and "employment of foreigners without title in an organized gang", after the controls made it possible to identify several irregular workers in one of the olympic constructions.
