a Pas-de-Calais boss sentenced for “ghost” sessions
The woman was given a three-year suspended prison sentence for having embezzled money from the Caisse des dépôts under the guise of services which were not carried out
The boss of a training company in Pas-de-Calais was sentenced on Tuesday to a three-year suspended prison sentence for having embezzled money from the Caisse des dépôts under the guise of services which were not carried out, informed AFP this Wednesday at the Saint-Omer prosecutor’s office.
This boss of a computer and office automation training company is also prohibited from carrying out a training activity for five years and from managing a structure for ten years.
As a legal person, his company Happy Form was sentenced, among other things, to a fine of 300,000 euros.
An investigation opened in 2021
Started thanks to a report from Tracfin, the preliminary investigation was opened in September 2021 into counts of fraud, forgery and money laundering.
It had brought to light fraud linked to the personal training account (CPF) system: candidates for training received gifts – gift cards, telephones, tablets, laptops – from this company in return for signing up with a simple attendance sheet.
In 2020 and 2021, the company received more than three million euros from the Caisse des Dépôts et des Consignations, which remunerates training companies, and the manager personally earned more than €300,000 in earnings from this fraud, according to the Saint-Omer prosecution.
In a press release, the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, the Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal and the Minister Delegate in charge of Vocational Training Carole Grandjean welcomed this unprecedented condemnation.
This is “a strong signal” of the “reinforcement of checks prior to registration on the platform” they underlined, deploring that “abuse harms the image of the CPF”.