It’s a little music that’s starting to grow and could well end up tarnishing the party a little. L’Express has already revealed it in its columns: the true cost of the Olympics will undoubtedly be much higher than what was initially estimated in the bid project. But now a new financial controversy is brewing. That of the very comfortable remuneration of those responsible for the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop).
In January, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into the remuneration conditions of the president of Cojop, Tony Estanguet. As president of an association, the ex-champion could not have employee status. It is therefore paid in the form of invoices. For the year 2022 alone, he would have received nearly 239,328 euros net, to which is added a variable portion of 47,387 euros, for a total of 286,715 euros net.
But the problem of salaries goes far beyond that of the president of Cojop alone. And this subject has regularly been highlighted by the sleuths of the Court of Auditors, responsible for scrutinizing all the organizers’ expenses. In a pre-report dated March 2, 2021 that we were able to consult but which has never been made public, we can read: “In practice, the minimum fixed salary paid to directors is 120,000 euros gross annually, and the average of the remuneration paid to members of the management team is 162,823 euros. Of these, eight come from the GIP, the public interest group responsible for piloting the application file – and benefited from a salary increase by 40% on average. In addition to the directors, eight senior managers have remuneration above 100,000 euros. The remuneration levels retained by Cojop are very significantly higher than those observed on average in the private sector.”
A premium difficult to justify
In this same document, the auditors of Rue Cambon are also surprised by the generosity of the variable remuneration elements as well as the existence of a “retention” bonus, a sort of precariousness bonus. A bonus justified according to the organizers of Paris 2024 by the need to motivate staff to stay until the end of the Games. Argument to which the Court’s experts retort: ”The principle of such a bonus, which increases significantly for directors, executive directors […] appears justified to ensure the stability of Cojop staff. The Court observes that its application to the President and the Managing Director, for whom it seems difficult to conceive that they would abandon their functions before the end of the Games, raises further questions.” In the meantime, the accumulation of the variable part and the famous retention bonus increases the gross annual remuneration of the lucky beneficiaries of almost 30%…
An addition of gifts that ends up being steep. In the Cojop budget, the line allocated to human resources has seriously slipped over the years: a jump of 31.3% between the 2018 estimate and the latest figures, according to another Court report dating from June 2023. Difficult in these conditions to make the French “swallow” the story according to which the Paris 2024 Olympic Games would be the most economical in history…
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