Goodyear lodges complaint over managers’ ‘boss-napping’

Public prosecutor for the French commune of Amiens, Bernard Farret, reports that management at Goodyear Dunlop Tires France have filed an ‘arbitrary detention and abduction’ complaint following the enforced detainment of two senior managers at the company’s Amiens Nord factory earlier this week. Production manager Michel Dheilly and human resources director Bernard Glaser were held for almost 30 hours and only freed at around 3:30pm Tuesday after police entered the building.

The complaint has been filed against ‘unknown perpetrators’. The tyre maker also lodged a ‘damage and theft’ complaint and reiterated that it “does not accept actions that endanger people and property”.

The maximum penalty for abduction according to the French penal code (Article 224-1) is 20 years’ imprisonment. Yet if an abductee is voluntarily released within seven days of his or her abduction, as was the case in Amiens Nord, the maximum sentence is whittled down to five years in prison and a €75,000 fine. In practice, however, the most severe penalty is seldom applied; of the 15 ‘boss-nappings’ that took place in France since 2009, only one has resulted in a conviction.