Olympic Games: Urssaf fines 93 companies for undeclared work

The party is over. Nearly ten months after the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, the Union for the Collection of Social Security and Family Allowance Contributions (Urssaf) is taking stock of its inspections carried out during the competitions. According to information from Le Parisien , confirmed to Libération by Urssaf, of the 841 companies inspected by the 200 agents mobilized before and during the Games, 93 companies were fined for undeclared work. "The vast majority of actions were carried out in the Ile-de-France region, but actions were also carried out in other regions," Urssaf explained to Libération . For example, during the torch relay , near event sites outside the Paris region or in fan zones.

"The fraud rate following our field inspections is not atypical compared to those we normally carry out," assures Emmanuel Dellacherie, director of regulations and control at Urssaf, to Le Parisien . Conversely, the amount of the adjustments "is not insignificant at all because it comes to 500,000 euros on average per file ." However, he specifies, "when we exceed 200,000 euros of adjustment, the file becomes significant in our eyes." Total amount: nearly 46 million euros. If only half of the companies inspected are from the Île-de-France region, this region alone accounts for 44 million euros of losses, or 96% of the total sum.

Because not all sectors are affected to the same extent. "While we have checked restaurants, cafes and shops, a considerable proportion of the adjustments have been made to private security companies , " Pierre Gallet, director of inspections at Urssaf Ile-de-France, explains to Le Parisien . These companies were generally "small, with low share capital" , most often registered a few months or weeks before the opening of the Olympic Games at the end of July.

The cause? A lack of urgent personnel to secure the events and the opening ceremony in the final stretch of preparations, as well as a low participation of security companies in the calls for tenders that had worried the authorities. Moreover, Urssaf notes their "ephemeral" nature, since "many fraudulent companies, created specifically for the occasion, quickly disappeared, placed in receivership from November 2024 after payment of their last invoices."

No link has been established between these rushed recruitments and the high rate of fraud among security companies. However, Pierre Gallet told Le Parisien , "most of the time these were subcontractors in cascade, sometimes ten levels below the main company that had won the call for tenders." While the Games organizing committee had limited the maximum number of subcontractors to three levels for the construction of Olympic sites , security, on the other hand, escaped these requirements.