Five months after being dismissed from his post as general manager of the 2023 World Cup, Claude Atcher is breaking the silence.
The former director general of the France 2023 public interest group gives an interview to "Midi Olympique" on Monday in which he tries to defend and justify himself.
At 67, he is accused of alarming managerial practices by the ethics committee and placed under a preliminary investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor's office for moral harassment.
“I'm not saying that I'm demanding, but very demanding.
I'm not going to be in denial, I'm like that.
But this requirement has always been set to allow everyone to grow.
Whether I'm not perfect, whether there are things wrong with my management, my methods or my relationship with others, whether there are people who like me or not, that's logic.
Especially since I tend to have a divisive personality.
I understood it well, for years” he says to defend his demands.
He also blames the youth of part of his team.
“The young generation on which we have relied does not approach the value of work as we were able to do in our professional commitment;
it shows difficulties in questioning itself and shows many signs of emotional distress in the event of opposition, by denying the existence of the problems and by accusing the others”, estimated Claude Atcher.
He had previously in the interview admitted that one of his executives had had a panic attack requiring the intervention of the firefighters following a dispute with him, regretting having said "Move on there is nothing to see" after this episode .
Claude Atcher also claims to be the victim of a kind of conspiracy: “I'm not fooled, he says.
Everything that happened next was perfectly orchestrated by a group of people who rewrote history to their advantage.
He will challenge his dismissal with a prud'homme in the months to come: "If I weren't a resilient person, I wonder if I wouldn't have made a dramatic decision about my own life, admit- he.
I still regularly look at my phone wondering why it's not ringing, if it's down or if there's a network problem… At the same time, it's so brutal that you have to go to something else.
You have to mourn.
You have to understand, and accept that it will never be the same again.
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For him, the page is heavy to turn.
“I am 67 years old, I have mourned the World Cup, but I cannot agree to leave the world of rugby with this image.
It's not me, I've never been convicted in my entire life.
My honor is my driving force.
I live an injustice.
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The purchase of tickets by Sébastien Chabal "legitimate" according to him
Claude Atcher also went into the detail of certain cases.
On that of tickets (we had revealed the sale of tickets for the World Cup via a parallel ticket office to personalities including Sébastien Chabal and Henri Mioch, friend of Atcher), the former boss of France 2023 recognizes the facts but does not see not really the problem.
On this case, Mioch and Chabal “work voluntarily for the GIP and express at some point the wish to buy tickets.
I find it legitimate and I put them in touch with the director of the ticket office.
Basta.
I don't know the number of tickets, I just learned of an order confirmation email", explains Claude Atcher, who admits having favored Henri Mioch ("he's even my best friend") and does not see problem with the advantages given to Chabal.
"Personally, I don't find it abnormal that he
(Sébastien Chabal, editor's note)
was able to buy tickets given the time he granted us and the use of his image that he left us".
