Fallen insurance tycoon Sadri Fegaier sentenced to prison

JUSTICE – It was a judgment awaited by thousands of consumers. The CEO of the Indexia group, Sadri Fegaier, was sentenced Tuesday, December 17 in Paris to two years in prison, including 16 months, as well as a fine of 300,000 euros, for misleading commercial practices concerning requests for termination and reimbursements of insurance contracts for telephones and computers. HuffPost followed the trial as you can see in the video below.

The fallen billionaire, as well as his companies SARL SFK Group, SFAM Celside Insurance, Foriou, Cyrana, Hubside and Serena appeared at the end of September in Paris, suspected of having improperly made hundreds of consumers subscribe to insurance contracts for their devices multimedia (computers, telephones).

As you can see in our video report at the top of the article, HuffPost followed the start of this trial, which opened in a tense atmosphere. Dozens of angry customers had traveled to the Paris court to finally see Sadri Fegaier in the dock. At our microphone, they testified to abusive practices that plunged some into a financial abyss.

Contracts sold to Fnac

The Paris criminal court also sentenced six companies in the group to fines ranging from 150,000 euros to 1.5 million euros. At the end of the deliberations, the 45-year-old businessman and his lawyers left the courtroom without commenting. He did not order the provisional execution of the prison sentence for Sadri Fegaier, as requested by the prosecution during the hearing.

The firm part cannot be adjusted, and the remaining 8 months of prison are accompanied by probationary suspension for two years, during which Sadri Fegaier will have to reimburse the victims and the Public Treasury, said the president, who read for two hours the decision.

The Indexia group is mainly known for having sold so-called affinity insurance in Fnac-Darty stores between 2017 and 2019, but also in its own Hubside.Store stores.

He was notably accused of having developed, between 2014 and 2022, a complex procedure aimed at discouraging them from their requests for termination or reimbursements.

At the time of their purchases, consumers were offered insurance for around fifteen euros per month. Years later, hundreds of people have seen the deductions multiply, reaching up to tens of thousands of euros in total, without having signed an endorsement or claiming to have never even signed an insurance contract. .

Due to a lack of response from the companies concerned, deceived customers alerted the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir and sent reports to the fraud repression, which opened an investigation in 2018. This ended in 2019 with a criminal settlement of 10 million euros. However, the complaints continued, with many consumers denouncing cancellation and refund requests that were never implemented.

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