Swimming: suspected of having embezzled “hundreds of thousands of euros”, the trial of the Horter family began in Mulhouse

À Mulhouse, la famille Horter face à ses errements comptables. MAXPPP – Vincent VOEGTLIN

Le procès de la famille Horter s’est ouvert, ce mercredi à Mulhouse. La famille est soupçonnée d’avoir détourné des "centaines de milliers d’euros".

"Ça laisse pantois" : at the Mulhouse court (Haut-Rhin) on Wednesday, the judges looked at length at the operation of Mulhouse Olympic Natation (MON) and its management by the Horter family, suspected of having embezzled "hundreds of thousands of euros".

It took more than 30 minutes for the president, Tiffany Gamain, to methodically cite the list of offenses accused of Marie-Octavie Lescot-Horter (80 years old), her sons Franck and Lionel (56 and 58 years), and the latter's wife, Marjorie Hauswirth-Horter (49 years old): "rebillings for fictitious services", payments "unjustified fees" or "undue salaries" , "fraudulent schemes", "scams", or even presentation of accounting balance sheets "unfaithful", between 2015 and 2019.

After this long enumeration, the judge quickly laid the foundations of the problem: in 2013 a tripartite agreement was signed between the agglomeration of Mulhouse (M2A), chaired by Jean-Marie Bockel , the sports club which has trained several champions and a commercial company (called "M.O.N. Club"), both managed by the Horters : the town provides them with a public swimming pool exclusively, the Swimming Training Center.

In return, the club, which manages the high level of sport, must pay an occupancy fee of 140,000 euros annually, largely covered by the 270,000 ;nbsp;euros of subsidies provided by M2A.

"Fluid fees"

For the commercial company, responsible for leisure activities, the arithmetic is not the same: it must pay a fee of 60,000 euros, more than 5 euros per month. % of its turnover, as well as "fluid costs" (notably water and heating, which are substantial for an outdoor swimming pool heated all year round), or around 130.00 euros in total, and obviously does not have any public subsidies.

To pay this sum, Lionel Horter and his wife will invoice services to the sports association, which is largely subsidized, as authorized by the agreement.

"I’I would like to know what a company which operates a nautical leisure center may have to provide in terms of services to an association which promotes Olympic sport", however, asks the president, who calls into question the "reality of the benefits".

"The cleaning staff were paid by the SARL, re-invoiced to the association", explains Lionel Horter , manager of the company until 2015, before his wife succeeded him. "Fees were re-invoiced, particularly for equipment management".

Faced with the importance of the amounts involved, the judge is not convinced. The company "wasn’was able to provide any real service to the tune of 130 000 euros to the MON association, we are left ;agree with that ?".

Untenable Convention

"Yes", concedes Franck Horter, called in turn to the stand in his capacity as president of the association from 2017. "But it’was the pot of earth against the pot of iron", he contests, denouncing an unbalanced balance of power with the agglomeration , and the impossibility of refusing the agreement.

According to him, M2A would have imposed an untenable agreement on his family, who moreover "did’not have the skills to understand"< /em> what she was committing to.