"There are many things that seem a little hidden,"
noted Tuesday the president of the court of Marseille before which appears the Spanish company Terra Fecundis for the hidden work of thousands of employees working for French farmers.
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Judged since Monday before the criminal court for having massively misused the rules for the posting of employees in the European Union, Terra Fecundis faces a fine of 500,000 euros and its three Spanish leaders are liable to 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 euros. They nevertheless deny having opened an establishment in France, which would have forced them to declare the some 6,800 employees seconded during the years 2012 to 2015 in French agricultural companies. A procedure which would have also obliged them to pay social contributions in France and not in Spain where their amount is lower.
Long heard by the court, Anne Perez, a friend of the three founders of the company based in Murcia (southern Spain) is suspected of having been the first logistics manager set up in France. She responds to complicity in covert work and organized gang bargaining. Qualified as
"commercial"
, it is she who provides information and
"explains the system"
to clients interested in seconded labor, which signs contracts on behalf of Terra Fecundis and distributes the deposits paid every fortnight to employees until 2013. The sums were transported in the coaches of Terra Bus Mediterraneo, a subsidiary of Terra Fecundis, which transported workers to French farms.
To pay the 150 euros in advance to the thousands of workers present in France, up to 400,000 euros in cash were transported in these coaches.
In 2013, Terra Fecundis was also the victim of an attempted robbery by one of its foremen.
Limited role or real “patron”?
Self-employed then Terra Fecundis employee from 2013, Anne Perez downgrades her role, referring to simple
"services rendered"
to justify the signing of contracts or
"information sent"
to the head office in Spain concerning labor orders. Lending herself a limited role of
"relay of Terra Fecundis in France"
, Anne Perez is however designated by employees as
"the boss, the one who commands in France"
.
The company had an office in an apartment in Châteaurenard (Bouches-du-Rhône) belonging to Francisco Lopez Pacheco, director of Terra Fecundis.
"There is no lease, the telephone subscription is in your name because Orange has requested a Kbis (official document certifying the legal existence of a company in France Editor's note), the name of the company is not on the doorbell ”
, the president of the tribunal Pierre Jeanjean is surprised:
“ There are a lot of things that seem a little hidden ”
.
"Guantanamo"
Greatly absent from this hearing, the South American workers were mentioned through their accommodation in campsites with which Terra Fecundis signed contracts. Most of the workers were hosted by their French employers. Certain operations had received the nickname of "Guantanamo", in reference to the detention center built by the American army in Cuba, or "El Carcel" (The Prison),
"which gives an idea of the places"
, points out the president of the court.
Terra Fecundis paid for camping accommodation, where their employees could not be accommodated by client companies to which it then invoiced a supplement of one euro per day and per person. In 2020, Terra Fecundis was blamed for the poor accommodation conditions of its agricultural workers after the appearance of 258 cases of Covid among temporary workers in the South-East of France
