Latest news with #AlexandreOuizille
LeMonde
20-05-2025
- Business
- LeMonde
Nestlé's fraud allegedly netted the industry giant over €500 million
More than €500 million. That is the estimated profit Nestlé (Perrier, Vittel, Hépar, Contrex) allegedly made from its mineral water fraud, according to a French Sénat inquiry commission, which released its findings on Monday, May 19. The report, revealed by Le Monde and Radio France, exposes a "deliberate strategy of concealment" by the major agri-food group and the French government. The consequences of this cover-up resulted in "excessive delays that allowed violations regarding consumer deception and health risk emergence to take root," noted Alexandre Ouizille, the commission's rapporteur and a Socialist senator. On August 31, 2021, the world leader in bottled water, under pressure from a whistleblower exposing similar practices about its competitor, Sources Alma (Cristaline, St-Yorre…), informed the French Ministry of Industry it was using banned filtration techniques (charcoal filters, UV, microfiltrations). However, the company was ordered to remove these treatments (charcoal and UV filters) a lot later and was only recently asked, in April, to abandon illegal microfiltration systems below 0.2 microns (Perrier) and 0.45 microns (Vittel, Hépar, Contrex).
LeMonde
19-05-2025
- Politics
- LeMonde
How Nestlé and the French government tried to conceal the Perrier water scandal
The French government's susceptibility to pressure from Nestlé, all the way up to the Elysée Palace, has triggered a scandal that continues to spread: These are the damning conclusions of the Sénat investigative commission charged with looking into fraud involving natural mineral waters (namely, the use of prohibited filters to purify water contaminated by pesticides and fecal bacteria) revealed in January 2024 by Le Monde and Radio France. After six months of work, the parliamentary investigative commission, chaired by Laurent Burgoa, a conservative senator from the southern Gard region where the Perrier plant is located, presented its conclusions on Monday, May 19. Le Monde and Franceinfo had access to the report. A new episode revealed by the investigative commission illustrates what rapporteur Alexandre Ouizille called "the dangerous liaisons between the government and Nestlé," and how the government folded to the lobbying of the agro-food giant to the detriment of consumer protection. The commission shows how a report from the regional health agency (ARS) of the southwest Occitanie region was toned down at the request of the world's number one bottled water company, following exchanges between the office of the junior minister for health (at the time Agnès Firmin Le Bodo), the director general of the ARS and the prefect of Gard to remove certain mentions of contamination of Perrier sources by banned pesticides and bacteria.
