In 2005, he acquired Lagassé communication et industries (LCI), a subsidiary of the EADS group based in Douarnenez and which employed 220 people (Finistère). But in 2012, the company had been liquidated, leaving 39 employees on the floor. Canadian businessman Louis Lagassé was sentenced Thursday by the Quimper criminal court to three years in prison and a 375,000 euro fine for bankruptcy and misuse of property.
Absent during the deliberation, the businessman also received a “final ban from exercising a commercial or industrial activity, from directing, administering, managing or controlling a business or a company”. The court did not issue a deposit warrant against him.
Civil parties satisfied
Louis Lagassé, head of the Canadian group GPV specializing in secure telecommunications, "was operated on December 22", justified his lawyer Kossi Amavi in court, stating that, since then, the accused has been traveling in a wheelchair. The prosecution had requested against him on October 28 a sentence of three years' imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros.
"Louis Lagassé, by his actions, committed over a long period, has impoverished a legal person, to the point of making it so bloodless that the commercial court could only decide on its judicial liquidation," said the court in its judgment. "This long-awaited decision is very satisfactory," reacted at the end of the deliberation the lawyer of the 21 former dismissed employees who brought civil parties, Dominique Le Guillou Rodrigues.
He will have to pay 180,000 euros to redundant employees
"Mr. Lagassé still claims his innocence," said Mr. Amavi. "He did what any man who runs a company should do," he said, adding that the "trial would not have taken place in Canada or elsewhere in Europe."
The businessman has ten days to possibly appeal. In civil law, the septuagenarian was notably ordered, all sums accumulated, to pay some 180,000 euros in damages to the dismissed employees.
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- Justice
- Quimper
- Business
- Judicial liquidation