The administrative court of Nice, seized in summary proceedings, suspended, Friday April 19, the execution of the order closing the Avicenne Muslim college, which had been accused of “opaque financing”. In a communicatedthe association’s lawyer, Sefen Guez Guez, affirmed that the prefecture had been ordered to pay the sum of 1,500 euros for legal costs.
In its order, the court explained that the “errors and inaccuracies” noted in the accounts of this private non-contract college, opened in 2015, and welcoming around a hundred students were not “not likely to justify the permanent closure of the establishment”.
On March 14, the prefect of Alpes-Maritimes, Hugues Moutouh, ordered the closure of this college at the end of the school year, without calling into question the quality of teaching but denouncing “opaque financing and obvious financial irregularities”.
The association denounces “relentlessness”
In accordance with the “separatism” law of 2021, the college must inform the administration of the origin of its funding. But after months of fruitless exchanges with the prefecture, the contribution tables presented at the beginning of March were still too imprecise for the prefecture.
During the hearing on Tuesday, in the presence of dozens of students and parents, the Avicenne association, an emanation of the Union of Muslims of the Alpes-Maritimes (Umam) and manager of the college, recognized ” errors “ in his accounts but denounced “a relentlessness”.
Mr. Guez Guez also mentioned a decision “disproportionate and unfair”especially since the college is located in a disadvantaged area of Nice and its closure risked sending most of the students back to the neighboring public college, already saturated.