The French construction group is the subject of a complaint from the SHERPA association filed as part of a survey on construction sites in the emirate.
Le Monde
French justice is interested in a Qatari subsidiary of Vinci. The construction group announced on Monday November 7 in a press release the summons before an investigating judge on Wednesday in Nanterre, of its subsidiary Vinci Construction major projects “for a possible indictment”, within the framework of a Survey on working conditions on construction sites in Qatar. The newspaper Le Parisien reported this information on Sunday. The French company says it refutes the accusations, in particular “forced work” and “deals with human beings”, two weeks before the opening of the World Football.
The instruction had been opened in November 2019, after complaints emanating from Sherpa associations and modern slavery committee (CCEM), as well as seven Indian and Nepalese employees who worked on these sites. The complainants accuse Vinci, Vinci Construction Large projects (VCGP), its subsidiary Qatari Diar Vinci Construction (QDVC) and their representatives of “reduction in servitude, deals with human beings, work incompatible with human dignity, deliberate endangerment, involuntary wounds and concealment “in particular, according to the complaint consulted by the France-Presse agency (AFP).
up to 77 hours of work per week
Vinci “has continued to vigorously refute the allegations brought against him concerning construction sites in Qatar carried out by the QDVC company” and “will continue to collaborate with justice”, explains the group, Monday, In its press release .
Six testimonies of complainants collected by Sherpa, which Le Monde had been able to consult in November 2018, evoke up to sixty-six-seven hours of work per week under temperatures between 40 and 50 ° C, for remuneration very weak. “Because of heat and humidity, I saw people vomiting, and falling like that on the ground,” says one of them. Witnesses also mention passport confiscations.
In response, the company had told the world to have “always worked in favor of improving working conditions in Qatar”, citing “discussions initiated in December 2014” with the International of Building and wood.
“None of the projects awarded to QDVC is linked to the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar” and they were “allocated (…) before the organization of this competition was attributed” to this rich emirate From the Gulf, specifies Vinci. He recalls that the projects have focused “essential on transport infrastructure”.
“We vainly tried to convince the magistrate that he was not particularly appropriate after seven years and a half of investigation to consider an indictment in the fifteen opening of the Football World Cup” , reacted on Monday to AFP the lawyer of Vinci Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, who fears “a media tumult”.
“If an indictment was pronounced against Vinci, this would confirm that multinationals are increasingly difficult to hide behind the value chains, the fact that it would be” too complicated “to act, and would recall that legally, voluntary improvement measures do not allow to escape the risk of criminal sanction in the event of suspicion of offense “, retains for its part the NGO Sherpa, at the origin of the complaint with constitution of part civil.