Since January 2024, the Union Nationale des Associations de Défense des Familles et de l'Individu (UNADFI) has been receiving a grant of 150,000 euros, courtesy of MIVILUDES. Officially, this public boon is supposed to fund a project to “digitize and share documentation” of the association, which is presented as a “heritage”. But upon closer inspection, the operation looks more like budget manipulation, technocratic window dressing, and accounting that lacks transparency.
The project, simple on paper - scanning internal documents to make them available on a secure digital platform, turned out to be extremely expensive: 150,000 euros, taken from taxpayers' dues, for a limited access to 150 people. That's 1,000 euros per user to consult the PDFs. And beware: the lucky ones will be selected according to “strict” criteria that the association did not see fit to detail. At this level of absurdity, also Kafka would have surrendered.
The figures in the tentative budget make your head spin: 142,746 euros will be needed to hire 2.2 full-time people to scan paper documents. Once expenses are deducted, the result is 3,651 euros net per person per month. Scanning has never been so well paid. Cherry on the cake: 13,923 euros in travel expenses have been budgeted, even though the documents to be digitized are all located in the UNADFI office. Will it be necessary to hire a shuttle service between the office and the photocopier?
The frenzy continues on the hardware front. UNADFI claims 11,355 euros for the purchase of four computers, two scanners, OCR software and a secure platform. Yet its annual accounts for 2023 show more than 92,000 euros worth of computer equipment already listed as assets. What is the point of buying more? Perhaps to feed the next line: 8,484 euros for maintenance and repairs...for brand new equipment that has not yet been purchased. Predicting breakdowns even before purchase: is this a budget forecast or deception? The absurdity here borders on indecency.
Added to this are 13,878 euros in external services and 11,965 euros in fees, with no indication given as to their actual use. It is not hard to imagine that the “fees” are those of the lawyer defending UNADFI, currently struggling with a number of legal problems. To make matters worse, UNADFI has announced that the grant will represent only 42.8 percent of the total project cost. A flattering but distorted presentation: this percentage includes 121,654 euros of volunteer labor – donated hours that no one pays for. In reality, once this mask is removed, the public subsidy covers 65.5 percent of the actual budget. A gross accounting manipulation, unworthy of an association that claims to work in the general interest.
And since the association, according to its words, does not like to be indebted to the state, it pays its taxes through the grant, in the amount of 5,221.00 euros.
But that is not all. The association recorded a deficit of 315,706 euros in 2022 and another 79,624 euros in 2023. It survives almost exclusively on grants from the MIVILUDES. Under these assumptions, the digitization project seems more like a pretext to inject new cash and mask the announced bankruptcy.
Above all, this scheme comes at a time when UNADFI is the subject of a preliminary investigation by the National Prosecutor's Office for Finances (note that being the subject of such an investigation does not mean being guilty, as UNADFI will be quick to remind us if we do not mention it here). Since 2021, judges have been examining the conditions under which some public grants are awarded, following a complaint of alleged misappropriation and dubious deals involving the association. In this context, the 2024 project could be a textbook case: a cartoonish example of a grant diverted from its purpose, cloaked in administrative jargon to better conceal its hollowness.
In short, UNADFI seems to have used the fight against “sectarian deviance” as a convenient smokescreen to justify its smoky lifestyle motivated by economic interests and sheltered from prying eyes. If subjected to proper scrutiny, the affair could reveal a management style closer to fiction than rigor. The Cour des Comptes (the French auditing office) would no doubt find it useful in unraveling a tangled web that one evidently prefers to keep well tangled.
Click the image to read the UNADFI demande de subvention to MIVILUDES
Source: CAP Liberté de Conscience
