Paris (AFP)
Didier Gailhaguet is suing the Ministry of Sports to which he claims some 300,000 euros in compensation for having treated him as a "scapegoat" in the scandal of sexual violence in French skating, AFP learned from its lawyers on Friday.
The former president of the French Federation of Ice Sports (FFSG) has just launched this procedure before the Paris administrative court after having been dismissed.
Didier Gailhaguet denounces the pressures and declarations of the Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu to force him to resign, in early February, from the head of the FFSG.
He claims 152,550 euros corresponding to the 27 months of compensation he would have received according to him if he had gone to the end of his mandate, as well as 150,000 euros of non-pecuniary damage.
In a letter dated May 29, of which AFP obtained a copy, the ministry rejected its prior appeal, finding that Didier Gailhaguet "consciously decided to resign", after that, in the context "and in the context of the State trusteeship over sports federations "," the minister questioned him about possible dysfunctions of federal governance and invited him to assume his responsibilities as legal representative of the federation ".
A fortnight before her resignation, several former skaters, including Sarah Abitbol in her book "Un si long silence", had accused some of their former trainers, including Gilles Beyer, of rape and sexual assault.
Didier Gailhaguet, who then chaired the FFSG since 1998 (with the exception of a parenthesis between 2004 and 2007), had been accused of having kept Gilles Beyer in the French skating circuit, despite suspicions in 2000, which he defends himself.
"The Ministry of Sports refuses to recognize its overwhelming responsibility in the public demonization enterprise of Didier Gailhaguet to make him the scapegoat for this case," said his lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth.
"This was all the more objectionable as it conveniently allowed him to escape a transparent assessment of his own shortcomings for 20 years consecutively," they add.
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