A page has just been turned for the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France. With less than a year to go, it does not directly or remotely concern the actual preparation of the global tournament, and even less its very essence, the game. But it is no less decisive for its organization .
Claude Atcher (photo above), the general director of GIP (Public Interest Group) France 2023 since its creation in May 2018, was dismissed from his position on Monday, October 10, following a vote by the board of directors of the organizing committee. His revocation is effective immediately. The former third row, one of the most influential figures in French rugby, a major player in France's victory in the campaign for the attribution of the 2023 World Cup, is disappearing from the landscape. At 66, his dismissal looks like the final end of the game.
The decision of the France 2023 board of directors was expected. According to several sources, the vote in favor of the dismissal of Claude Atcher was not in doubt. The three shareholders of the GIP – the French Rugby Federation (FFR), the State and the CNOSF – agreed to show the exit to a character who had become too cumbersome, eleven months before the World Cup.
The Claude Atcher affair began at the end of last June. Its starting point: a long investigation of everyday life L'Equipe, where a terribly degraded climate is revealed within France 2023. Employee testimonies describe “ management by terror » exercised by Claude Atcher. The investigation also points to financial irregularities, with the general director of the GIP being suspected of using the organizing committee's credit card and car with driver for personal purposes.
Two months later, on August 29, the Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, announced the precautionary dismissal of Claude Atcher, a decision motivated by the submission of a first report from the committee ethics of GIP France 2023.
Her exclusion from the organizing committee, without remuneration, leaves time for the procedure launched by the minister to continue. A labor inspection mission is carried out to the organizing committee. His report was submitted at the end of September to Jacques Rivoal, the president of the GIP.
Monday October 10,AFP announced at the beginning of the afternoon the emergency convening, for the same day, of an extraordinary board of directors of France 2023. On the agenda, the dismissal of Claude Atcher, received earlier by Jacques Rivoal for a preliminary interview, but also the confirmation as new general director of Julien Collette, who was acting head of the organization, and the appointment of Martine Nemecek as deputy general director.
According to a source close to the case cited by theAFP, Claude Atcher « hung on all summer » to keep his position. However, his fate seemed sealed for several weeks.
Preparation for the 2023 Rugby World Cup will therefore continue without Claude Atcher, its most recognizable figure, so associated with the event that he sometimes found himself talking about it as his own thing. But the troubles are not over for the now former director general of the GIP.
Claude Atcher appeared last month before the Paris criminal court, notably in the company of the president of the FFR, Bernard Laporte, for “ concealment of breach of trust“. He is accused of having received undue sums from 2017, on behalf of his company Score XV, as part of France's candidacy for the 2023 World Cup.
Prosecutors requested two years in prison against him, one of which was suspended, a three-year ban on managing a commercial company, a one-year ban on any role in rugby, plus a fine of 50.000 euros. The judgment is expected to be delivered on December 13.
At the same time, an investigation by the General Inspectorate of Finance was carried out by the Ministry of Sports. She is interested in possible financial dysfunctions of which Claude Atcher may have been guilty in his role as general director of France 2023. His report is expected in the coming weeks.
