what do the defendants risk?

They are ten in number. The defendants who appeared on January 30, 2023 before the Bobigny criminal court in the case of the death of two undocumented workers on a construction site in Seine-Saint-Denis in 2019, will know on April 4, 2023 the fate which will be reserved for them by the judge, we learn from a dispatch from the Agence France presse (AFP). If a large majority of their lawyers have pleaded for release, the defendants incur up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. For companies prosecuted as legal persons, a fine of 150,000 euros was requested, as well as the dissemination of the decision on their website for thirty days.

The case concerns the death of two men, aged 29 and 34, who worked on the rehabilitation of the La Source housing estate in Épinay-sur-Seine. The operation involved the construction of 478 housing units, the lessor of which is Plaine Commune Habitat. The two undocumented migrants, who had been recruited shortly before the tragedy, were working on thermal renovation from the outside of the structure. They lost their lives on June 8, 2019 when the basket they were on broke away. They were on the eighteenth floor, and neither was trained to work at heights.

The reflection of accidents at work?

The defendants, seven men aged 37 to 61 and three construction companies, are on trial for manslaughter and concealed work. “This file illustrates accidents at work. Concealed work makes the bed of this type of accident“, declared the Bobigny prosecutor Alix Bukulin, who points in this case to a “cascade of contracts, disempowerment“.

She asked for a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of 5,000 euros against the manager of the SRI company – who has since fled to Egypt – and his site manager who had recruited the two victims. These”were not declared on the day of the events but two days after their death“, she added. The company which had won the market for the rehabilitation of part of the city for seven million euros and the two subcontracting companies blamed the company SRI “approved to work on a construction site“, said a lawyer for defense.

A “anchor fault” of the platform

“A lack of anchorage” of the platform was pointed out by an expert report. The assembly of the nacelle “was not done in the rules of the art“, clarified the prosecutor. “He admitted not having carried out the static test“of the nacelle, replied the lawyer for the expert who had to verify the conformity of the installation of the equipment, but”he knew that this control was of no great use“.”A static test carried out at two meters would not have identified defects on the 18th floor“, she says. A sentence of eighteen months of prison suspended sentence of which eight months firm was requested against this expert.

“It’s the Lépine competition for the worst public works company“, quipped, for his part, the lawyer for the two families of the victims, Me Jean-Philippe Feldman, during his argument. “The platform was set up anyhow by incompetent people“, in a frame where “everyone takes responsibility“, he continued. According to him, the defendants “didn’t care like their first public works of deathof the two workers.