Ben Barbaud, co-founder and director of the Hellfest festival, was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 20,000 euros for embezzling 300,000 euros.
As the daily Ouest-France revealed last Friday, the courts condemned Ben Barbaud, the director of the Hellfest festival, for “breach of trust”.
The decision was rendered on April 19 by the court of La Roche-sur-Yon, in Vendée, after several months of investigation. Everything would have started from an alert launched by Tracfin, the intelligence service of the Ministry of the Economy.
In essence, the co-founder of the event is accused of having deliberately mixed his personal accounts with those of the festival, resulting in damage of around 300,000 euros. According to Ouest-France, these funds would have been used to buy wine and works of art.
The public prosecutor of La Roche-sur-Yon, Emmanuelle Lepissier, told AFP: “Mr. Barbaud admitted the facts and undertook to reimburse the sums, the victims having to be reimbursed on the sale price of a property which had been seized.
For its part, Hellfest clarified: “The cash advances subject of the procedure have been reimbursed in full. The case is now closed.”
A festival source told AFP that these were “advances” made irregularly from an accounting point of view, but “without intention of misappropriation”. Ben Barbaud “has absolutely not denied the facts”, according to said source.
Following this conviction, Barbaud was banned from exercising the presidency of an association for five years and was given the role of director, in order to continue to ensure the sustainability of the famous annual event.
In addition, the 2023 edition of Hellfest ended a week ago and was a great success with 240,000 festival-goers. A portion of the tickets for next year’s edition will go on sale tomorrow, Tuesday 27 June.
