An investigation opened against the group of private crèches People & Baby, in particular for fraud and embezzlement of public funds

The group is the target of a complaint from Anticor after the publication of an investigative book by journalist Victor Castanet, “Les Ogres”.

An investigation was opened after a complaint from the Anticor association, in particular for fraud and embezzlement of public funds, against the group of private crèches People & Baby, declared Monday, November 18, the Paris prosecutor's office, requested by AFP . The case follows the publication of the investigative book The Ogres (Flammarion), released mid-September. The investigative journalist Victor Castanet describes the “voracity” of certain groups of private crèches and in particular of People & Baby.

According to the prosecution, Anticor's complaint denounces “acts of fraud to the detriment of a public person or an organization charged with a public service mission, embezzlement of public funds, abuse of corporate property, breach of trust, complicity in fraud tax, potentially attributable to People & Baby crèches”. The investigation was entrusted to the direction of the judicial police on November 14, according to the same source.

“Faced with the inertia of the public authorities, it seemed necessary to us to act”, Paul Cassia, president of Anticor, said during a press conference on November 12 announcing the filing of the complaint. The association's lawyer, Vincent Brengarth, detailed the different qualifications targeted by the complaint “in the particular context of these crèches which benefit (…) from public aid from the State” and the “lack of number of places in crèche”. According to him, the amount of money embezzled would be “a minimum of 2.1 million euros, a figure which only concerns partial unemployment aid fraud”.

In a press release sent to AFP in mid-September, People & Baby – whose founder and president, Christophe Durieux, was ousted from his post in the spring – affirmed that “the practices described in the work” by Victor Castanet “are totally out of step with the values ​​we hold today”.