THE TELEGRAPH: A French millionaire [billionaire?] has become the first person in the country to go on trial for being paid too much, in a ground-breaking move against "corporate greed".
Antoine Zacharias is facing criminal charges despite the £90 million pay and pension deal being approved by his company’s directors.
He is accused of misusing funds by accepting the money to run Vinci, the world’s biggest construction company.
The sum was set by a remuneration committee chaired by Quentin Davies, Britain’s junior Defence Minister.
Mr Zacharias, 71, is the first French industry captain to face criminal charges over earnings and faces up to five years in prison and a fine of £336,000.
French bosses are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the two-day trial at the court in Nanterre outside Paris, as a guilty verdict could lead to a wave of prosecutions in France over executive pay.
France is notoriously mistrustful of its patrons, and the country was hit by a wave of “boss-nappings” last year in the wake of the financial crisis.
Under French law, company bosses can be prosecuted for misusing funds. However, this is the first time a case has been brought against someone who appeared to have acted within company rules on pay.
Hailed as France’s boss of the decade by the Harvard Business Review, Mr Zacharias transformed Vinci into a construction powerhouse, raising profits by more than 300 per cent and turnover by 81 per cent in six years.
But in 2006 he was ousted by his number two, and successor, who accused him of corporate greed. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Thursday, March 25, 2010
*We, the British, should follow suit, as should the Americans. In fact, this should happen wherever corporate greed is a problem. What about jailing and punishing severely those fat cat, greedy bankers? Five to ten years in the slammer would do them a world of good. It would sober them up. They would become examples for all the others just waiting to milk (shouldn’t that be cream?) the system. You’d soon find that corporate greed would become a thing of the past if these ‘can’t-get-enough-types’ were put through their paces in clink. Let the show begin! – © Mark
