Tennis: Anticor files a report with the National Financial Prosecutor's Office, the FFT more than ever worried

Europe 1 with AFP 20:19 p.m., April 11, 2023

The pressure is increasing: after a complaint for "corruption" and "embezzlement of property" against the French Tennis Federation (FFT) against the backdrop of the Roland-Garros ticketing, the Anticor association has also made a report to the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), we learned Tuesday from a source close to the case.

A month and a half before the France Open at Roland-Garros (May 28-June 11), the FFT seems caught in a judicial storm difficult to cross, a storm that could also splash the current Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, former director general of the Federation. On 16 March, a complaint against X was filed by executives and former leaders of the FFT for "embezzlement of property" and "corruption".

The plaintiffs accuse the current president of the FFT Gilles Moretton, elected on February 13, 2021, and two of his relatives, the current treasurer Jean-Luc Barrière and his former chief of staff Hugues Cavallin, of having "organized the embezzlement of tickets of the Roland-Garros tournament to the detriment of the FFT" and of having "exonerated themselves from the consequences of their misdeeds".

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"Stink balls"

This complaint and the report of Anticor, filed on March 22, revealed by Mediapart and that AFP was able to consult, "are still under analysis," said the PNF, requested by AFP. In its report, the anti-corruption association notes the same facts as those contained in the complaint. These are ticket resales, illegal according to them, operated by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Tennis League (AURA) (chaired from 2018 to 2021 by Gilles Moretton) and by the Paris committee (led by Jean-Luc Barrière, now treasurer of the FFT).

The Parisian committee is suspected of having resold forty tickets for the 2019 edition of the Roland-Garros tournament "to the company AS Events", a company whose companion of Hugues Cavallin, former president of the Paris committee until 2017, "holds 50% of the shares", according to Anticor. Anticor also mentions, like the plaintiffs, the coinage of 80 tickets by the AURA League, then chaired by Gilles Moretton, as part of partnership contracts with sponsors in exchange for these premium tickets for the 2020 edition Roland-Garros.

But these practices were no longer allowed since September 2017 according to Anticor, recalling that after this date, "only the FFT could now proceed to the sale of its tickets" and that the regional leagues could certainly buy them "to manage their public relations", "offer them to promote the development of their public relations", says the association, but not to "resell them to third parties".

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Moretton refutes

An analysis that does not share the president of the FFT, who, if he admits to having sold tickets in commercial packages for the 2020 edition, refutes to AFP any irregularity, and speaks of "stink balls" about these cases. Gilles Moretton argues that "all Leagues were authorized to sell tickets in public relations packages, to partners" until a vote of the General Assembly of the FFT in December 2019.

"The Leagues had the right to sell tickets received by the FFT or to do their own 'Public Relations', but they did not have the right to resell them in 'packaging (places, restaurants, reception...)' integrated into partnership contracts," explains a former FFT executive. Anticor also suggests to the PNF to look into the conditions under which the former chief of staff of Gilles Moretton, Hugues Cavallin, first engaged on the list of outgoing president Bernard Giudicelli, took the decision to finally support at the last moment of the campaign the list of Gilles Moretton, "a decisive support", writes Anticor.

For the association, if this support was negotiated with the counterpart of the appointment of Hugues Cavallin to the position of chief of staff (February 2021-May 2022) of the president of the FFT, "such an agreement could characterize the offense of corruption".

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"First class funeral"

The former treasurer was also the subject, like Gilles Moretton, of a referral to the disputes commission by Bernard Giudicelli about possible illegal ticket sales. Five days after the election of Gilles Moretton, an Executive Committee in which the current Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, then CEO of the FFT, definitively ended the procedure by a vote "unanimously", according to the minutes consulted by AFP. This vote is problematic, according to the president of Anticor, Elise Van Beneden, who spoke in Mediapart of "a first-class funeral".

To date, no inspection mission has been launched by Matignon (it is the Prime Minister who exercises the supervision of the FFT, and not the Ministry of Sports under a decree taken during the summer of 2022 taking into account the passage of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to the general direction of the FFT). Questioned Tuesday morning on the sidelines of a trip, the latter also recalled being legally unable to comment on these cases.