New twist in the remuneration affair within the Olympic organizing committee. According to a France Télévisions survey, which will be broadcast Thursday evening in the program “Complément d’investigation”, around ten “senior executives” saw their “already high” salaries increased at the end of 2023, for the majority “between 7 and 10 %.” Claudia Rouaux, socialist deputy for Ille-et-Vilaine and member of the Paris 2024 remuneration committee, considers this situation “unreal”: “We are a few months before the Games, we have the impression that they are completely letting go, while conversely, this is the period when we should exercise more budgetary prudence.”
For some leaders, this increase is more significant. A “communications director” – not mentioned in the first information released – would have seen her salary increase from 150,000 to 195,000 euros per year. An increase over one year explained by the desire to respect equal pay, while “certain female profiles were not up to the best salaries (like this specific case).”
The “Complement d’investigation” teams would also have obtained the invoices of Tony Estanguet, paid as an independent worker via “a company created for the occasion.” According to France Télévisions, the president of the Organizing Committee would have received “239,328 euros to which is added a variable part of 47,387 euros, for a total of 286,715 euros net.” If he remains in office until the end of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, he should also receive “a sort of loyalty bonus”, which will be equivalent to 10% of his total income. Tony Estanguet would have received around 300,000 euros per year for seven years, a sum however lower than what Sebastian Coe, boss of the London Olympics in 2012, received (remuneration estimated at 400,000 euros per year).
In February, after the revelation of the recent opening of an investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) into the salary of its president, Tony Estanguet, the organizing committee for the Paris-2024 Olympic Games (Cojop) announced of his “astonishment” to the AFP. “The organizing committee is surprised to discover this information,” reacted Cojo, assuring that “the remuneration of the President of the Organizing Committee was very strictly regulated.” Tony Estanguet would have received annual remuneration of 270,000 euros gross until 2020, according to figures communicated by Cojop in 2018.
