investigation opened on the management of the Federation by Didier Gailhaguet

An investigation will be opened, in particular for breach of trust, after a report on the management of the French Ice Sports Federation (FFSG) by Didier Gailhaguetsaid Tuesday the Paris prosecutor’s office, requested by AFP.

This preliminary investigation, which will be entrusted to the financial brigade, follows a recent report from the General Inspectorate for Education, Sport and Research (IGESR) which alerted, among other things, to the improper use of the bank card of the federation and a lack of transparency of contracts under the governance of Mr. Gailhaguet, former omnipotent president of the FFSG.

Contacted, Mr. Gailhaguet’s lawyer did not respond immediately.

Inappropriate spending and questionable contracts

The inspection of the governance of the FFSG before 2020 had been decided in the wake of the election in June 2022 of the current president of the FFSG, Gwenaëlle Noury, very strongly suspected of having been remotely guided by Didier Gailhaguet.

The latter is officially no longer at the helm of the federation for three years, after being forced to resign for having covered a trainer implicated in and ault in another case.

Among the facts reported to the courts are a “use of the federation’s bank card for inappropriate expenses and sometimes without supporting documents” and an “lack of transparency in the management of certain contracts for the provision of services and important advice with companies historically linked to the FFSG, for sometimes very high costs, through opaque interpersonal relations with the former management and administrative team“.

But also “non-regulatory methods of remuneration of high-level athletes and the activities of undeclared sports agents” or “threats and attempts to intimidate current leaders“.

These suspicions come to darken the horizon of the FFSG, which continues to sink into the crisis since the winter of 2020 and the Abitbol affair, the champion who said she was as a teenager by her former coach Gilles Beyer, now deceased.

As the IGESR report pointed out,the effects of the 2020 crisis, which implicated more than twenty coaches for and gender-based violence, are still very present“, with some “divisions” And “rivalries between clubs, between coaches, between disciplines, between former athletes“.