Four people have been indicted, in particular for moral harassment or bankruptcy, in the case of the company Arcadia, based in the Yvelines and accused by former employees of having allowed themselves to be "
infiltrated
" by Scientologists, learned on Friday April 15, AFP from sources familiar with the matter.
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The indicted are the boss of the company, two auditors and a consultant.
They dispute the alleged facts, between 2013 and 2015, when they were then all Scientologists.
These indictments, pronounced between October and March, are the first in this eight-year-old case.
In a June 2014 complaint, a dozen employees of Arcadia, a company specializing in the development of attics based in Voisins-le-Bretonneux (Yvelines), south-west of Paris, believed that the management of their company had been "
infiltrated
" by Scientologists to "
loot it financially
".
In particular, they claimed to have been forced to follow training courses provided by Scientologists and to undergo “
psychological subjection
”.
On June 30, 2014, the company went into insolvency.
A preliminary investigation was opened in Versailles in July 2014, then an investigation in August 2015.
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"Looted the business"
Last January, the boss of Arcadia was indicted for "
moral harassment
", "
complicity in bankruptcy
" and "
misuse of corporate assets
".
The investigating judge interrogated him in particular on the use of concepts of the Church of Scientology within his company and on the heavy bills paid to listeners while Arcadia's financial situation worsened.
"
My client has two enemies in this case
," defended his lawyer, Marc Bensimhon.
On the one hand, “
the twelve employees
” complainants who had, according to him, “
fomented the idea of bringing down the company
”.
On the other, the two auditors who "
looted the company
and fooled his boss, he added.
Contacted, the lawyer for the former complainant employees, Me Olivier Morice, did not wish to comment.
For Noémie Saidi-Cottier, lawyer for the financial auditor indicted in October for "
bankruptcy
", "
abuse of social assets
" and "
moral harassment
", this case is based on "
an instrumentalization of Scientology
" while the case rather falls under the "
conflict about the takeover of a company
" between employees and boss.
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