Moroccan Vineyard Owner Sentenced for Human Trafficking and Labor Violations

Prosecuted for several counts of accusations, including human trafficking against several people, the employment of employees without work authorization, but also the subjection of several vulnerable or dependent persons to unworthy housing conditions, the manager and sole shareholder of Vitilham, a Libourne company created in 2019, was sentenced on Tuesday to two years’ imprisonment, one of which was suspended with a two-year probationary period with provisional execution and an obligation to compensate the civil parties, reports Sud Ouest. She was also banned from managing or directing a company. Her company Vitilham was sentenced to a 50,000 euro fine for human trafficking in Gironde, in southwestern France.

The manager appeared before the Libourne correctional court on Tuesday. She was facing four plaintiffs. One is a civil engineering graduate. The second, a student, worked in Morocco organizing weddings. The third, like the others, came to France to "earn a better living." As for the last one, he is absent, in a "psychological state that did not allow him to be there." "48 other victims are at the office, between Libourne and Bordeaux," said one of the civil parties’ lawyers. Vitilham promised them a three-year employment contract in France with a salary of 1,500 euros per month, regularization of their administrative situation, with the obtaining of a residence permit, but also housing. However, to sign the contract, go to France and start work, they had to pay between 8,000 and 13,000 euros.

Once in France, these workers are disillusioned. They lived in very harsh working conditions with a pickup truck at 6 a.m. and a foreman who watched them and never missed an opportunity to call them to order when he felt the work was not going fast enough. They lived in unsanitary accommodations, invaded by rodents, where several employees were crammed into each room. They only had a too thin mattress as well as furniture they had recovered themselves from the dump.

In their complaints, the victims also denounced insufficient wages, unpaid hours of work, as well as periods of unemployment while they were supposed to be under contract. They accused the company of extorting money from them. In addition to the sums in euros they had to pay before boarding to France, these workers mention the 2,000 to 3,000 euros they had to pay for each renewal of their residence permit. According to them, the worker who tries to rebel finds himself targeted by various intimidations. Two of the four plaintiffs were indeed victims of "pressure" during the summer of 2024, which led them to be "exfiltrated" from Gironde.

"She herself acknowledges that she has been careless," said the lawyer for the defendant, however rejecting the accusations against her client, who denies the threats as well as the sums claimed. Following the prosecution’s requisitions, the court sentenced the manager and her company.