France’s sports minister has called upon French football federation (FFF) president Noël Le Graët to tender his resignation after the publication of a damning administrative report which slammed a “sexist and violent” atmosphere within the federation and the sexual harassment of female staff by Le Graët.
The report, which detailed the findings of a five-month inquiry by a ministerial inspection body, the IGESR, cited the personal responsibility of Le Graët in the dysfunctions at the FFF, France’s biggest sports federation, which governs all professional and amateur football in the country. It said Le Graët’s “behavioural excesses are incompatible with the exercise of functions and the requirement of exemplarity” demanded of his post.
“The hearings conducted by the [IGESR] mission have revealed that the uncalled-for and offensive nature of Mr Le Graët’s comments may be accentuated by the excessive consumption of alcohol,” the report underlined.
It also strongly criticised FFF managing director Florence Hardouin, accused of bullying staff, for her “brutal methods”.
“The status quo is impossible”, said sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who had ordered the inquiry, at a press conference soon after the report was published on Wednesday. “I know he is a man of decision,” she said of Le Graët, “so I hope he will take good ones in the days ahead. If he doesn’t, other avenues exist and could be activated.”
Under the rules of the world football governing body FIFA, national football federations are required to manage themselves independently of any political or government interference, which if transgressed can technically lead to the exclusion of a national team from competitions. While Oudéa-Castéra is therefore unlikely to directly order the sacking of Le Graët, one possible alternative “avenue” would be if all the members of the FFF’s executive committee decided to resign, which would force new elections of its management.
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Le Graët, a food industry businessman and former socialist mayor of the Breton town of Guingamp, has been president of the FFF since 2011. In early January he was forced to temporarily step down from the job, pending the conclusions of the IGESR inspection, following repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him, and amid a controversy over his offensive comments about former French footballer Zinedine Zidane.
Earlier this week, an independent report commissioned by the European football governing body UEFA into the debacle of the Champion’s League final held in Paris last year, found that while the responsibility for the matchday chaos and violence was primarily the responsibility of UEFA itself, the French police and the FFF also “bear responsibility” for the failings.
The crisis now engulfing the FFF follows separate recent scandals in French sport. In December, French rugby federation president Bernard Laporte, who between 2007 and 2009 served as sports minister, was convicted of corruption and influence peddling. Laporte, who managed the French national rugby team between 2000 and 2007, finally resigned from his post on January 27th. Meanwhile, two days earlier, Bruno Martini, the president of France’s national handball league, resigned after he was convicted of “corrupting minors” and the possession of images of child pornography.
The IGESR inspectors, who carried out 114 interviews with FFF staff, said that because of Le Graët’s behaviour towards women, along with his controversial public comments and the failures of his governance, he “no longer has the necessary legitimacy to administer and represent French football”.
They reported that their interviews with staff revealed “not only comments and phone text messages from Mr Le Graët, ambiguous for some and clearly of a sexual nature for others, but also the late hours of the sending, their repetitive character and the nature of the addressees – women placed under his authority and/or in a relationship of dependency”.
On January 13th, the IGESR alerted the Paris public prosecution services to a number of allegations levelled against Le Graët, considering that some of the events reported by staff could be regarded as criminal offences.
The report published on Wednesday criticised FFF managing director Florence Hardouin, who in January also temporarily stepped back from her post, for her “brutal methods” and “erratic behaviour”. It described a deleterious atmosphere within the management committee in which there were “manifestations of contempt between directors”, “the use of vulgar language” and the “exchange of terms of abuse and invectives”.
However, while the inspectors found Hardouin to have failed to address the “sexist and violent” ambiance within the management committee, they noted that she “felt of having suffered from the inappropriate behaviour of Mr Le Graët, from whom she said she feared reprisals in the case of direct opposition”.
Beyond the particular cases of Hardouin and Le Graët, the report more widely concluded that the FFF’s policies for “the combat against sexist and sexual violence in the federal network lack effectiveness and efficiency”. It said insufficient resources were allocated to the issues of sexist and sexual violence, and that the FFF “systematically avoids” employing the words. The inspectors called on the federation “to adopt an explicit communications campaign and a plan of action” to combat sexist and sexual violence, “clearly aimed” at encouraging victims to speak out.
As for the FFF’s executive committee, the core of its governance, the report described it as “a place of acknowledgement and consensus” where projects are “debated little, or not [at all]”, resulting in a “weakness in the exercise of democracy”.
However, it is that same committee that is to meet early next week to discuss the conclusions of the report and to decide what action to take in the case of Noël Le Graët, who until then officially remains president of the FFF.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version, with some added reporting, by Graham Tearse