For four days, from April 7 to 10, the Vesoul judicial court in Haute-Saône looks at a large business of hidden work in the transport field. 35 drivers were not declared. We tell you everything about this trial.
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Four days of hearing. Four days to understand the system implemented at the time. At the helm will parade French, Slovak or Polish. A Haut-Rhin business manager seems to be the head of this network. He had created companies in Poland and Slovakia.
These executives of transport companies in France and abroad will have to respond “of organized band execution of concealed work”; “Submission of several vulnerable or dependent people with unworthy working conditions” or “employment of workers in premises without compliant health facilities”. The company SA GEFCO and another Polish Road transport company SAS SASU GEFCO France are also summoned before the judges.
Gefco was previously the historic carrier of the PSA automotive group, which has become Stellantis. Society no longer exists today. Bought in 2023, it is now called Ceva Logistics.
The case dates back to 2017. It all starts after a control of the DREAL (Regional Directorate of Environment, Planning and Housing) of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The agents notice irregularities. Their investigation allows you to discover an illegal labor system between French transport companies and Eastern countries. The investigation becomes sprawling with ramifications in subcontracting societies.
Polish or Slovak truckers were not declared while they were rolling in France, They also worked in “unworthy conditions”. A judicial information had been opened by the Vesoul prosecution in 2021. The investigators had discovered that they were hosted in Quincey near Vesoul on an unsanitary site. The drivers were housed in dilapidated bungalows, affected by water infiltrations and mold, with unhealthy sanitary facilities.
“All our activity was perfectly transparent,” defended one of the five defendants on Monday, Christian Hass on Monday. “I understand what is reproached to me, but I do not understand the mechanism. I expect this trial to understand,” added this 63 -year -old man, who at the time of the facts managed a company based in Alsace, who collaborated with Polish and Slovak companies to provide drivers to Gefco. “I had confidence in him and I did not ask for an explanation” on the financial montages that Cousin and co-manager of the company, Camille Hass, questioned by prosecutor François Prélot.
One of the Polish expenses, Agniezka Potocka, argued by sobbing that she has always been benevolent and attentive to the truck drivers she used. “I do not understand why I am here, I followed closely the evolution of Polish and European legislation to be in good standing”, in a very tense sector at the time, with frantic competition, she said before the judges.
In this case, “the stake, for these business leaders, was to escape the payment of their social contributions in France”, explained Emmanuel Dupic, prosecutor of Vesoul, during the indictments in 2021.
This European traffic has heavily prejudiced to URSSAF, the organization responsible for collecting social contributions from French companies. From 2015 to 2018, the organization should have received 800,000 euros with companies prosecuted.
URSSAF Franche-Comté brought a civil action to this trial. This is also the case for the organization of Franche-Comté European road carriers. As early as 2021, the union denounced these hidden work practices., Blandine Tatin, secretary general of the Franche-Comté, then claimed more controls from road carriers from eastern Europe. While the trial opens, it awaits an exemplary condemnation due to the social dumping practiced and the human component of concealed work. “Importing like that at our doors of kinds of contemporary time slaves has something shocking,” she explains to here Besançon.
Victims of this frantic competition between carriers to win contracts with customers seeking the slightest cost, five truck drivers were also civilized during this trial whose judgment is expected on Thursday, April 10.