On July 13, 2023, SFR, the main French subsidiary of Patrick Drahi's Altice group, was in a state of shock. The telecom operator's employees had just learned of the arrest, in Portugal, of Armando Pereira, Drahi's long-standing associate, for alleged financial malfeasance. An internal investigation was quickly launched. As part of it, senior executives were asked to hand over their computers and business phones. This is what Tatiana Agova-Bregou, SFR's executive director of audiovisual content, did on July 20, the day before she left for vacation in Bulgaria, the country of her birth.

But on July 31, Altice France notified her of an exemption from work, suspended her access to the company's networks and offices, and sent her letters of resignation from her workers' council functions for her to sign before August 2. Having received no response by this date, management revoked all these responsibilities on the grounds of "objective, proven interference with the smooth running of the company." At issue was Agova-Bregou's intimate relationship with Pereira, revealed by telephone taps conducted by the Portuguese legal system, extracts of which were published on July 26 by the newspaper Sabado.

As the scandal shook Drahi's empire, the group had to crack down on certain individuals. Agova-Bregou is the first to be affected at SFR. Her dismissal was announced to employees on August 2, at a central works council meeting, and was quickly picked up by the media. "On that date, she was the only Altice France employee to be suspended," states the minutes of the meeting held that day. In the weeks that followed, some 15 executives left the company, either dismissed or quietly forced to resign, most of them because of their proximity or family ties to Pereira.

Since then, Agova-Bregou, who began her career in January 2010 at Numericable, one of Drahi's first companies, before rising through the ranks, has strongly contested her dismissal. The first case was launched in June 2024 before an industrial court, followed by a second, more recent, procedure before the Paris Commercial Court. Le Monde has learned that on August 14, Agova-Bregou sued SFR Presse Distribution and Sportscotv, the two subsidiaries of the operator of which she was a corporate officer, in a commercial court, accusing them of "abusive dismissal, in harsh and vexing circumstances damaging to her honorability and without respect for the principle of adversarial proceedings."

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