The leaders of the Mulhouse Olympic Swimming are summoned on November 16 to the criminal court of Mulhouse where they will have to answer in particular for abuse of corporate assets for damage amounted to “hundreds of thousands of euros”, announced Monday the prosecution.
The case involves the Horter family, well known in the French swimming community: Lionel Horter was the coach of Roxana Maracineanu, the first French world champion and former Minister of Sports.
The summons closes a preliminary investigation opened in January 2020 by the Mulhouse prosecution and entrusted to the financial brigade of the judicial police.
It concerned the management by the Horter family of the accounts of Mulhouse Olympic Natation (MON), the club in charge of high-level activities, but also of the commercial company MON Club, in charge of leisure activities, currently in liquidation.
The president of the association, Franck Horter, the main trainer of the club, Lionel Horter, his wife, Marjorie Horter, and his mother, Marie Octavie Horter, former vice president of the French Swimming Federation, are thus sent to court, the latter for more minimal facts, according to the details provided to AFP by Edwige Roux-Morizot, public prosecutor of Mulhouse.
“They are accused of having taken advantage of a number of misappropriations to the detriment of these different structures,” she said, confirming information from FranceInfo.
In addition to the misuse of company assets, they are dismissed for breach of trust, presentation of inaccurate balance sheets and concealment of these offences. The damage “is calculated in hundreds of thousands of euros, not in millions,” said Edwige Roux-Morizot.
Since 2013, the MON and the company MON Club have had exclusive access to the swimming training center provided by the urban area of Mulhouse, the M2A, responsible for managing sports equipment.
In an analysis commissioned by M2A in 2020, the firm EY pointed out that the provision of facilities and their management posed “questions in terms of the stability of the economic model, compliance with the regulatory and legal framework, and transparency of financial flows. “.
The M2A, in which Franck Horter sits as elected municipal official of Mulhouse, nevertheless maintained its support for the leaders of the MON and its subsidies.
At the same time, a judicial investigation is opened in the context of a presumed embezzlement of subsidies. In this investigation, the club is indicted for “attempted fraud” for facts dating back to 2016.
Asked, the Horter family did not wish to react.
