History of the FGDR

The operations of Crédit Martiniquais, a network bank based in the French Caribbean departments and closely linked to the local economic fabric, seriously deteriorated during the 1990s. A provisional administrator was appointed in May 1997. In September 1999, the Banking Commission (now the Autorité de Controle Prudentiel et de Résolution - ACPR) requested the Fonds de Garantie des Dépôts et de Résolution (FGDR) to carry out a preventive intervention. The aim was to avoid the bank entering into insolvency, which would have resulted in the unavailability of customer deposits and disrupted the local economy. The intervention primarily involved bridging the capital shortfall and providing Crédit Martiniquais with the resources to meet its immediate obligations, in order to enable the purchase of the network, along with its deposits, by a third-party operator.
The FGDR agreed to the intervention request and, in early 2000, disbursed nearly 1.7 billion francs (approximately €260 million) in the form of repayable advances. After recovering part of this amount through the sale of the network to BRED and the sale of liquidable assets during the liquidation of Crédit Martiniquais, the FGDR still holds a receivable of €178 million. It is working to recover this amount from the former executives.
The legal recovery process has seen several twists and turns, with actions taken in appeal and subsequently in cassation. The litigation is still ongoing.
In 2018, the judicial liquidator i of Financière du Forum, the company that succeeded Crédit Martiniquais, sued certain legal and de facto directors in a lawsuit for liability coverage. This case is still ongoing before the Paris Commercial Court. The details of these proceedings are presented in each of the FGDR’s annual reports since 2013.

Mutua-Équipement had provided end-of-construction guarantees on behalf of homebuilders, benefiting their clients, the future owners of these homes. In 1997, Mutua-Équipement was placed into judicial liquidation. By decision of September 28, 1999, the Banking Commission requested the FGDR to intervene to compensate the client-owners in the event of a default by their builder.

The FGDR thus assumed the guarantee commitments issued by Mutua-Équipement. It managed 350 construction completion files and paid out over €6 million in compensation.

The FGDR’s intervention with Mutua-Équipement was completed with the closure of all client files and the resolution of any legal disputes. The company’s liquidator i sent the FGDR a final liquidation dividend. As a result, the intervention is considered definitively closed.

Européenne de Gestion Privée (EGP) was an investment firm licensed in 2006 for portfolio management on behalf of third parties and for the receipt and transmission of orders. Although the company was based in Bordeaux, nine-tenths of its operations were conducted through its Italian branch in Rome.
The intervention of the Deposit i Guarantee i Fund (FGDR) for the guarantee of securities was triggered on December 15, 2010, due to the company’s insolvency and its inability to return all or part of its clients’ assets. The ACPR appointed a banking liquidator i .
On January 10, 2011, the Bank i of Italy placed EGP’s Roman branch into forced administrative liquidation and appointed an administrative liquidator i . Insolvency was declared by the Bordeaux Commercial Court on January 12, 2011, and a judicial liquidator i was appointed.
On March 16, 2011, the FGDR notified the clients of the Bordeaux office (80 active clients holding €7 million in assets) that their entire holdings were available. They were able to freely dispose of them without the FGDR having to compensate them.
For the 800 clients of the Roman branch (approximately €250 million in assets), the FGDR conducted thorough investigations with the Italian liquidator i to determine the reality of the assets entrusted to the branch and what had happened to them. The majority of clients could not prove their contributions to EGP. A significant portion of the clients’ assets were likely held in tax havens. The final positions of the clients were determined in April 2012, and compensation payments amounted to just over €8 million.
Former EGP executives are being prosecuted in Italy for various charges, including fraudulent bankruptcy. The FGDR has joined as a civil party. Other lawsuits have been filed in France by former EGP clients. A total of 84 lawsuits were filed before the Paris Administrative Court. However, this figure represents less than 10% of the compensation or rejection decisions made by the FGDR.
Once the investigation was concluded, all cases were called to a single hearing on February 18, 2014. Through a series of decisions made in March and July 2014, the Paris Administrative Court dismissed all 84 lawsuits, thus validating the FGDR’s approach in terms of client eligibility for compensation and the amounts awarded to the applicants.
None of the dismissed applicants appealed these judgments, which became final.
Additionally, the criminal lawsuits in Italy against former executives, in which the FGDR joined as a civil party, continued. In a landmark ruling on December 2, 2016, the Rome District Court sentenced the main executive at the time and eight others to various prison terms of up to 4 years for fraud against clients and for the illegal exercise of activities. The court also ordered the parties to compensate the FGDR.
The criminal proceedings continued in 2018, with the FGDR being represented in hopes of recovering some of the funds spent on compensating clients.

Dubus SA was a brokerage firm based in Lille, authorized as an investment firm with the ancillary activity of account keeping and custody. Its main business was as an online broker specializing in stock and derivative markets. It remained independent and had over 2,000 clients, primarily individuals.
At the end of 2012, an insufficiency in the segregation of client funds became apparent, alongside an ongoing operating deficit that had been draining the company’s cash flow for several years. This insufficiency grew large enough that, starting in July, the ACPR decided to take coercive measures. On July 12, 2013, the ACPR appointed a provisional administrator to determine the origin of the segregation insufficiency and verify its amount.
The Supervisory Board approved the FGDR’s preventive intervention in favor of Dubus SA during its meeting on October 11, 2013. On October 18, the ACPR adopted the required precautionary measures and set November 30 as the date for the cessation of activities.
The segregation account was opened at the Banque de France i on October 23, and client funds began to be transferred there from October 25.
In total, the FGDR’s effort to cover the segregation insufficiency amounted to €3,806,722.75.
The business and most of its clientele were successfully sold to Bourse-Direct. The provisional administrator appointed by the ACPR subsequently declared the company’s insolvency before the Lille Commercial Court on February 4, 2014. The court placed the company into judicial liquidation on February 17, 2014, and appointed a judicial liquidator i , while the provisional administrator was appointed as the banking liquidator i by the ACPR. On March 27, the FGDR declared its claim for the amount of the segregation insufficiency it had paid.
No legal proceedings related to the FGDR’s intervention or the segregation mechanism put in place to isolate client funds were initiated, so this case can be considered closed.