For more than a year and a half, the French Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) has been going through a crisis born of a violent split between its president Brigitte Henriques and a core of opponents around his predecessor Denis Masseglia, a soap opera that is of growing concern to the sports world fourteen months before the Paris Olympics.
Will there be an epilogue to this bad telenovela which embarrasses many French sports players? “Nothing is less certain, we absolutely cannot predict the future, it’s tragic”, recognizes a senior executive in French sport.
A general meeting is to be held Thursday in the house of French sport, and never has the climate been so tense, between threats of complaints, calls for resignation and revelations of internal email exchanges…
Brigitte Henriques, ex-vice president of the French Football Federation (FFF), elected in June 2021, will she be able to survive this umpteenth episode of tension?
Technically, unless a resignation, which Brigitte Henriques has repeatedly repeated not to consider, this new AG cannot lead to much.
“A priori, the camp of the opponents does not have the possibility of bringing it down, but here, we are at the climax of the confrontation triggered a year and a half ago”, estimates this leader.
The tension has actually risen several notches in recent days. In a gesture of appeasement, Brigitte Henriques had invited Denis Masseglia, with whom relations had already been very strained for months behind the scenes, to speak on May 16 in front of the members of the board of directors. But Denis Masseglia did not take the outstretched hand and, on the contrary, relaunched a now total conflict.
The former president, before the members of the body, read a letter detailing his grievances against the president, citing financial irregularities and undue expenses according to him. And he then drew the ultimate weapon, evoking a complaint against X for breach of trust with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) which was to be filed “in the coming days”, can we read on the mail consulted by the AFP.
An intervention which triggered the ire of Brigitte Henriques, denouncing a “cabal”, and a form of “harassment”.
Masseglia explained to AFP that he could not bear that on April 4, during a press conference at the CNOSF, Brigitte Henriques’ lawyer, Me Arash Derambash, threatened to file a complaint against him.
A new episode which plunged “many federation presidents into a state of amazement”, confides one of them.
Asked about this situation, the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, estimated on France Inter that “the sports movement can in no way afford such divisions (…) in front of the whole world”, asking that ” this house come back in order”.
“I do not imagine that these problems, which shock the sporting world, will extend beyond the month of May, I am sure that we will find a solution” she added on the channel L’ Team Tuesday night.
“She’s right, she has to bang her fist on the table”, judges another federation president “appalled by the shameful spectacle” offered by the CNOSF.
“This conflict of people must stop, it is no longer possible,” he adds.
The break between Brigitte Henriques and Denis Masseglia finds its origin much earlier, at the time of the ousting of Didier Séminet in September 2022, as revealed by exchanges of emails published in several media, than AFP also obtained. The president, in an email dated October 12, 2021, expressed in particular her indignation at the behavior of the man who had nevertheless dubbed and supported him during his election.
Relations between the two only deteriorated thereafter.
Latest episode, an email revealed by the daily newspaper Le Monde by Denis Masseglia sent to Brigitte Henriques in January 2022 in which the former physics professor suggests an arrangement for covering his costs for his role as “ambassador” and “honorary president”, a mission entrusted after his departure. In this email, consulted by AFP, the ex-president suggests splitting his costs in two, so as not to arouse “misunderstanding” from the Court of Auditors.
A new piece in a machine that has gone mad… “We have to stop this reality TV show. The image given by the sports movement today is dramatic. We have to reset all that, it’s possible, ”said Philippe Bana, president of the French Handball Federation.
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