An injunction and after? Illan Castronovo, Simon Castaldi, Capucine Anav, Anthony Matéo, Léa Montchicourt and Gaëtan Debled were sanctioned by the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (DGCCRF) on Friday for breach of the rules concerning commercial partnerships. Their penalty: an injunction to stop fraudulent practices and the obligation to post on their profile a publication listing the alleged offenses for 30 days.
The measure that affects the six influencers at the moment is the injunction. This is an administrative police measure, provided for by Article L521-1 of the Consumer Code and Article L470-1 of the French Commercial Code.
A scale of sanctions according to the seriousness of the facts
The DGCCRF requires them to adopt, within a defined time frame, the corrective measures necessary to comply with the law. If they fail to do so, then it may impose an administrative fine or other penalty.
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If this injunction may seem anecdotal, it is actually part of a palette available to the French justice and the DGCCRF to regulate commercial practices. This ranges from a simple warning to imprisonment for the most serious offences.
Warnings, injunctions and fines are decided by the DGCCRF itself. For the rest of the sanctions, it can transmit the minutes of its investigations to the courts, which can then decide on a criminal or civil sanction depending on the case. In the case of deceptive commercial practices, the penalties can be up to two years' imprisonment and a fine of €300,000.
After the investigation carried out by its services, the DGCCRF carries out "an assessment according to the seriousness of the facts", says one with the Parisian, which allows it to define the most appropriate sanction. "There is a real monitoring of practices on the part of our services and in case of recidivism, the penalties will obviously be heavier," says the DGCCRF, which maintains that "the publication of these injunctions on the networks is also a strong gesture", while a law governing the practices of influencers was voted Thursday.
However, these influencers are not the first to be pinned by the services of the Ministry of the Economy. The reality TV star Nabilla Benattia was fined 2021,20 euros in 000 for "misleading commercial practices relating to the promotion on the social network Snapchat of an online trading training site".
