Michael Weis and a team from PWC are currently--at the request of the Caritas board of directors-- unravelling transfer after transfer, signature after signature, bank account after bank account, to determine exactly how the NGO was robbed of €62m in just a few months and checking all the accounts. At the same time, another PWC partner is knitting a future for Caritas that is in line with the demands of the prime minister, (CSV).
According to our sources, Tiphaine Gruny is completing the creation of a new structure that will take over the national activities of the Fondation Caritas Luxembourg and Caritas Accueil et Solidarité. It's not an easy task in itself, and the head of government's reaffirmed desire to no longer have to deal with the NGO's current directors means that the PWC partner has to walk on eggshells.
Gruny needs to find new founding members, working capital to start operations, external funding to cover operations and the salaries of employees who are not already covered by an agreement or funded, and the creation of a board of directors. All this, without the boards of the current entities or their representatives on the crisis committee being involved or having the slightest information about this project, which is considered to be ultra-confidential.
The independence of the new project demanded by the authorities, to which Christian Billon is contributing his expertise, should result in a takeover of activities and employees by a neutral structure with no governance or management links with the current entities. More than 350 employees should continue their tireless mission to serve the societal good. On Monday, the OGBL trade union announced that 20 to 30 people would be affected by the reorganisation.
According to one source, this is because the international activities financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have not been rolled over, and the NGO’s current government agreements can no longer be carried out under the same conditions or at the same level as before. All possible solutions will be discussed with employees during individual interviews, including internal or external redeployment, retirement or early retirement for those who so wish. Nothing has been decided, but a redundancy plan could be envisaged if no solution can be found with each of the employees concerned. As the OGBL itself had announced, salary payments are guaranteed until the end of September.
Over the past few weeks, Billon and Gruny have been regularly received by a monitoring committee set up by the head of government and headed by his chief of staff, Michel Scholer, accompanied by officials representing the ministries concerned. It is there that the agreements and current accounts relating to government funding are discussed, along with the options for resuming government payments and the plan for resuming activities within the new structure.
It will be months before we have all the details of what the courts initially presented as a that lasted four months and resulted in dozens of transfers for €62m, but which now seems much more complex.
Read the original French-language version of this report