Fram Group Considers Liquidation of Moroccan Subsidiaries After 7-Year Struggle

Will the Moroccan subsidiaries of the Toulouse group Fram soon be liquidated? Launched in 2013, the liquidation process will have lasted more than six years. Fram Orange Tours, on which the subsidiaries Framotel Maroc (60% owned by Fram Orange Tours and 38% by Voyages Fram) and the subsidiary Internationale Tourisme Cars (ITC) (nearly 80% for Fram Orange Tours against 21% for Voyages Fram) depended, was owned by Voyages Fram (it held it at nearly 99%). In 2013, the latter had sold 4 of its hotels (Idrissides, Volubilis, Jardins de l’Agdal and Les Dunes d’Or) to the Atlas Hospitality Morocco Group due to financial difficulties. In October 2014, Voyages Fram triggered a judicial liquidation.

Part of the sale proceeds was transferred to Toulouse. The second part is kept in escrow in Morocco, as liabilities guarantees for the Atlas Hospitality Morocco Group, up to 70 million dirhams (i.e. 7M€), or about a quarter of the total sale price (around 450 M dirhams). But things did not go as planned. Fram failed to meet its commitments. At the end of 2015: the Toulouse Commercial Court ordered the liquidation of the Toulouse Group. "There is no judicial administrator in Morocco," says Ali Berrada, the statutory auditor of the Moroccan subsidiaries ITC, Fram Orange Tours and Fram Hotel, to TourMag.

"Out of the just under 70 million dirhams remaining in the escrow account, there was a liability of the subsidiaries as well as a liability that Voyages Fram owed to the buyer Atlas Hospitality," he summarizes, adding that at the time of the sale in 2014, Voyages Fram had insisted on keeping a percentage of rooms for its business, but the Group did not fulfill its obligations. "Atlas Hospitality attacked it claiming an enormous sum, around 40 million dirhams. We managed to negotiate with the Group, to indemnify them a bit for the quota and the unfulfilled commitments," he summarizes. The manager says there was also a tax audit for the Idrissides hotel, in which Voyages Fram had to pay certain amounts of the liability.

"This dispute lasted for a while, but we ended up settling it - about 20 million dirhams - with Atlas Hospitality," continues Ali Berrada. At the same time, the social liabilities and the normal liabilities (suppliers, taxes, staff of the subsidiaries) had to be settled, they had to be compensated, in agreement with the liquidators in Toulouse and in Morocco." This information is confirmed by a judgment of the Toulouse Commercial Court dated June 30, 2020. "So there was a kind of amicable liquidation, even if the subsidiaries are not yet liquidated," summarizes the manager. A meeting should be held at the end of June, with representatives in Toulouse to proceed with the dissolution of the companies by liquidation.