After the death of its director Andreas Vogt in November 2020, , until then deputy director general of the Luxembourg Red Cross. “But it was from that moment on that we noticed a difference in the way our activities were managed: it was no longer the human aspect that was the priority, but money,” says Ingrid Theodor, a qualified educator and manager of a structure for Ukrainian refugees in Differdange, and deputy on the staff delegation of the Caritas Foundation (OGBL).

“We tried to alert the board of directors several months ago to the problems in the financial department of the Caritas Foundation, but the management did not respond to our requests,” says Smail Suljic, central secretary of the health, social services and education union at the OGBL. And even within the company as a whole, the climate was terrible,” employees told us, “with a very high turnover.”

And what about the current management?

“The only person who had an overview of the foundation’s finances was the person charged. And would the board have reacted if it had listened to the staff delegation? It’s not even certain,” says Suljic. What the OGBL was asking for, and what the union is asking for through the new Hëllef um Terrain (HUT) structure, “is for a representative of the delegation to be present on the board of directors, as is the case with banks, because after all we are talking about public funds.”

Asked whether or not director Marc Crochet was currently present at the company, Theodor explained that “he has been on sick leave since the scandal broke in July, as have the other three members of the management committee [in charge of HR, operations and finance, editor’s note].”

Denunciation of “non-transparency”

The OBGL organised a press conference on Friday 20 September to “denounce the lack of transparency of the crisis committee and the absence of dialogue with the staff delegation on the new contracts that will be given to employees to sign. At present, we have sent everyone an email asking them not to sign any contract terminations until we have seen the new contracts,” adds Theodor.

As a reminder, ” (HUT, or “help on the ground”) will take over from Caritas to continue the institution’s national activities. As at 20 September, the articles of association had not yet been filed with the commercial register.

This article was originally published in .