2023-07-04 17:11:09
Embarrassing. On the right track to take the presidency of Medef, at the end of the election of this Thursday, July 6, Patrick Martin wishes to cut short any accusation of ambivalence in his relations with judicial representatives. Firms with a storefront in this profession are indeed suspected of having massively subtracted funds which were intended for employees of companies in difficulty. But in this distancing exercise, Patrick Martin recklessly contradicts himself, between his public positions and the comments he may have made internally to his teams.
Thus, in a right of reply sent on May 11 to Challenges, after the publication of an article which questions the role of employers in this file of judicial administrators and judicial agents (AJ-MJ), the current number two of Medef denies any personal and professional proximity with one of the sector representatives, Eric Etienne-Martin. This namesake, unrelated to Patrick Martin, was a member of the office of the National Council of Judicial Administrators and Judicial Agents (CNAJMJ) until 2020 and is still honorary president of the French Institute of Insolvency Practitioners. Challenges “lends me a closeness with Mr. Eric Etienne-Martin which is perfectly false”, points out Patrick Martin. “I have only met him once in 40 years, and it was neither in a professional capacity, nor under the Medef”, continues the head of the Medef.
Excerpt from the right of reply sent by Patrick Martin to Challenges, May 11, 2023.
An embarrassing message
However, on July 29, 2019, Patrick Martin sent a very different message (see below) to his teams mobilized on the file of theWage Guarantee Association (AGS), this organization run by employers who are sounding the alarm about AJ-MJs. “Hello, lunch with E Etienne-Martin, whom I have known personally for over 40 years. At the head of 10 studies of legal representatives across France”, writes Patrick Martin from his personal mailbox.
Message sent by Patrick Martin to his teams, July 29, 2019
He then recounts a substantive discussion with this interlocutor, who underlines in passing the brutality of the position of the legal representatives. The latter are ready to keep with them the sums recovered from the failing companies or recovered in pain, even if they would be partly due to the AGS. By drying up the finances of the association, they assume without hesitation the idea of breaking a tool for social peace set up in the aftermath of the Lip strikes of the 1970s, and which makes it possible to pay wages in mistreated companies. .
In this discussion, Patrick Martin firmly defends the position of Medef in defense of the AGS, refusing blackmail. The conversation, no doubt lively, was therefore perfectly professional and it was indeed as number two in the employers’ organization that Patrick Martin expressed himself, facing Eric Etienne-Martin, who was himself still a member at the time of the office of the National Council of Administrators and Judicial Agents. Patrick Martin ends his message with “Please do not report on this discussion.”
A father judge at the commercial court
The candidate for the presidency of Medef did not wish to respond to our requests. But one of his spokespersons for the campaign insists on the informal aspect of the 2019 meeting. He explains that Eric Etienne-Martin was a friend of Patrick Martin’s father. Died in 2010, Jean-Yves Martin was indeed a judge at the Commercial Court of Bourg-en-Bresse – and he therefore worked closely with the legal representatives there.
It is under this family past and at the request of his father’s former golf companion that the number two of the Medef would have accepted a lunch. “Patrick Martin had not expected that the subject of the AGS would be mentioned during this meal, assures the spokesperson. But solicited on this file, he detailed a position devoid of any ambiguity and perfectly in defense of the AGS. He then made a point of making a precise report to his teams – which is proof that he acts in complete transparency. Since then, he has not seen Eric Etienne-Martin again”.
This firmness of Medef vis-a-vis the judicial administrators, at the time, is not disputed besides. The employers’ organization had just signed, shortly before, in March 2019, at the instigation of Patrick Martin, a complaint alongside the AGS and the Confederation of SMEs for “theft, active and passive corruption, forgery and use of false”. This complaint under investigation, targets members of the former management of the AGS, who would have voluntarily turned a blind eye to the abuses of the judicial administrators.
But in October 2019, a few months after lunch, the Medef seems to be stepping aside, by not joining a second complaint made by the new director of the AGS, Houria Aouimeur. The latter, after investigation, does not wish to be satisfied with denouncing individual excesses, but indeed to attack a system of evasion of funds, which it considers organized by important firms of judicial agents. Since then, Houria Aouimeur, supported by Medef upon her appointment, was dismissed in early 2023 for having abused expense reports too much. She considers herself to be a whistleblower and brought the case before the industrial tribunal, which is due to rule on July 12.
Serial business takeover
The AGS and AJ-MJ file thus presents itself every day more like a fragmentation grenade – especially since the association Anticor announced in May that it intended to take the case to the investigating judge. In his wish to avoid a bad outburst, Patrick Martin disputes with the same vigor having had regular dealings with AJ-MJs, this time not as a representative of Medef, but as a director of the Martin-Belaysoud company. If he had recourse ten years ago to Maurice Picardat the head of a study in Bourg-en-Bresse and president of the CNAJMJ (National Council of Judicial Administrators) in 2006-2007, it is only on an ad hoc basis: friend of the father too, the judicial administrator helped to resolve the conflict between Patrick Martin and his brother, Jean-Christophe Martin, at the Lyon commercial court, for the takeover of the family company Martin-Belaysoud.
Since Patrick Martin finally took over, the company specializing in industrial supplies and building materials has grown considerably, with more than twenty acquisitions to date. But promised, all these operations have been carried out in goods, specifies the leader, that is to say that the target companies have not been bought at the bar of the commercial court, in contact therefore with administrators and judicial agents. Another exception to this general rule, specifies the manager: the Comptoir des pros was acquired in 2018 in liquidation at the Commercial Court of Lille.
Temporary difficulties
However, other companies that have entered Martin-Belaysoud’s portfolio have encountered difficulties and could, as such, have been placed under mandate. to this or conciliation, procedures that involve AJ-MJs but under the seal of the greatest secrecy. A connoisseur of records ensures that this case has indeed occurred several times. Patrick Martin himself also acknowledges, in his 2019 message to his teams, that he may come to discuss specific files of companies in difficulty, theoretically covered by the secrecy of the procedure: “[Eric Etienne-Martin] is on big files to come – which I situate well”, he relates.
Among these companies that have gone through temporary difficulties, NED, specialized in photovoltaics, acquired in 2022 by Martin-Belaysoud, had been hit by the Covid crisis, with an operating loss of one million euros for 30 million euros in turnover in 2020, before to recover. Another establishment rectified by Martin-Belaysoud: Dorise experienced strikes in the wake of the acquisition in 2015, due to announced job cuts “under cover of economic difficulties”, as indicated at the time by the CGT. “It was only a logistical reorganization, assures the spokesperson for Patrick Martin. To think that in all of these acquisitions judicial agents have intervened is nothing but an absolute joke”.
Pebble in the shoe
As for Pascal Rhoumy, auditor of the Martin-Belaysoud company for more than ten years, he certifies that all these companies, “starting with NED, were in good financial health”. They are now following a dazzling growth path, he underlines. Questioned, Pascal Rhoumy on the other hand evades the question of the presence or not of AJ-MJ in these multiple procedures – that the latter circulated information on these companies in an informal way or that they took an active part in their assignment.
If he becomes boss of bosses tomorrow, it is likely that Patrick Martin will still have to fight to defend the Medef and his own management of the backfiring file of the judicial administrators and the AGS. Hoping that this pebble in the shoe will not prevent him from moving forward.
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