Led by the Horter family, Mulhouse Olympic Natation (MON) has suffered unfortunate accusations.
The city, through its vice-president for sports Daniel Bux, declared that the club was occupying the public swimming pool without any authorization, AFP revealed on Tuesday.
The Mulhouse Swimming Training Center (Haut-Rhin) has been the MON training location for thirteen years.
But he has no longer been available to the club since last September.
The agreement linking the latter to the city has not been renewed.
“At the end of the agreement established for the 2022-2023 season, at the end of September, the MON association had not paid the amounts due and the mandatory accounting documents,” justified Daniel Bux.
The club would have notably failed to provide the detailed annual accounts and the auditor's report for the 2022-2023 financial year.
The agglomeration would have granted him additional time, until the end of January, to fulfill his obligations.
Which he didn't do.
The MON therefore now occupies the public swimming pool “without rights or titles”, according to Daniel Bux.
75,000 euros of debt
The vice-president of sports detailed the debt that falls to the Mulhouse club: 50,000 euros of unpaid royalties over the past season (out of the 90,000 to be paid in total) and 22,500 euros of “compensation for occupation without right ".
The MON therefore owes 75,000 euros to the agglomeration.
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The club's president, Frank Horter, defended himself to the AFP.
According to him, since 2021, the agglomeration has failed to pay certain subsidies to the MON.
“Start by paying the subsidies, and we will pay you the rent,” he said.
Until 2020, the club could receive up to 480,000 euros per year, almost half of its total budget.
In great financial difficulty, the MON will appear at the Mulhouse court at the end of March.
A placement in receivership or judicial liquidation is being considered.
On the other hand, Frank Horter and other members of his family, Lionel Horter, the head coach of MON, Marjorie Horter and Marie-Octavie Horter are summoned to court in April.
They are suspected of breach of trust, misuse of company assets, presentation of inaccurate balance sheets and receiving stolen property.
According to the prosecution, which investigated for more than three years, the damage amounts to several hundred thousand euros.
“Politically, there were agreements”
“We could have done better,” concedes Daniel Bux.
The vice-president for sports admits that the agglomeration did not see the point in controlling the use of funds paid to the MON.
In 2023, the Regional Chamber of Accounts published a report in which it criticized the agglomeration for having “imperfectly exercised its control over the use of the funds it allocated and the achievement of the set objectives”.
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Daniel Bux admits, for example, to not having attended any general meeting of the swimming club between 2011 and 2021. He also regrets a form of connivance: “Politically, there may have been agreements, but that, that bothers me. exceeds.
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In December 2021, the Horter family had already been singled out for their financial management.
The commercial company “MON Club”, in charge of leisure activities at the training center, had been declared insolvent.
Placed in compulsory liquidation, its debt to the agglomeration amounts to 371,000 euros.