Lille – The shareholder of Camaieu filed a complaint on Wednesday for defamation against the lawyer for the CGT of the ready-to-wear brand, accusing him of “totally false” remarks evoking possible cash drains at the expense of the company , put into liquidation, his lawyer told AFP.
The complaint with civil action for defamation of an individual was filed with the Paris court. It targets Me Fiodor Rilov, for remarks made Tuesday during a general meeting at the call of the CGT at the headquarters of Camaieu in Roubaix, quoted by various media, specified for the shareholder Me Baptiste de Fresse de Monval.
“Unfounded and false” remarks
These “comments undermine the honor and consideration of the HPB group”, Hermione People and Brands, a subsidiary of Financière immobilière bordelaise (FIB), which had taken over Camaieu in 2020, said the lawyer. “Totally unfounded and untrue, they fall under defamation law,” he added.
Me Rilov proposed to the employees to start a procedure against HPB, in particular to find traces “of all the operations of transfer of funds between Camaieu and other companies of the group”.
HPB incriminates two sentences which would then have been pronounced by Me Rilov. He would have, according to the shareholder, affirmed that “it is not excluded that funds which were no longer in the company were taken”. He would also have indicated that the procedure he wants to launch aims to “know the operations that have emptied the cash”.
“No company in the group, nor the shareholder, has benefited from funds from Camaieu,” HPB chairman Wilhelm Hubner told AFP on Wednesday.
This complaint constitutes “an attempt to divert attention”, reacted Me Rilov for AFP, affirming his resolve to “quickly initiate” the legal actions presented to the employees. Claiming not to have been notified of the complaint immediately, he indicated that he would not hesitate to file a complaint for “slanderous denunciation”.
On the merits, “I note that the employees are convinced that a certain number of abnormal operations took place, it is necessary to seek (…) if abnormal financial operations were organized and if they contributed to the discomfiture of Camaieu”, he added. The northern ready-to-wear giant was placed in compulsory liquidation on September 28 by the Lille commercial court, two years after its takeover. (AFP)