The rout of the Selection Group takes its president in its wake. Réal Bouclin is now under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The list of his creditors shows that the businessman has involved in his setbacks several members of the family of his wife, the host Valérie Taillefer: he owes them more than 33 million.
• After Groupe Sélection, its president, Réal Bouclin, becomes insolvent.
• The businessman has placed himself under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA).
• He drags debts of 160 million.
In total, Réal Bouclin accumulated personal debts of 160 million.
Valérie Taillefer herself registered a debt of 1 million and her father, Jean-François, nearly 6 million. Companies linked to her father and Valérie Taillefer’s brother-in-law, Philippe Morin, also have claims totaling 26.3 million.
Despite everything, Bouclin’s financial setbacks do not seem to have split his couple. In a statement that the host sent to La Presse, she said she supported her spouse “without reservation”.
“Réal is a man with a big heart and a unique dedication that led him to success, I am proud of what he has built over the past 33 years,” she says. During and after the pandemic, my spouse made choices to keep jobs and construction sites while the whole world stopped. It is his vision that I supported and that I admire. I am confident that the current situation is only temporary and that the best is yet to come. »
His former partner Rémi Vigneault, who claims nearly 12 million from him, on the contrary describes the situation as a “total fiasco”, in an interview with La Presse. He enlisted the services of a trustee and had been seeking since the beginning of August to identify assets of the businessman that he could seize.
“They have already started identifying some personal property. We were halfway through our process,” says Rémi Vigneault. In 2021, he obtained a judgment forcing Réal Bouclin to pay him additional millions for the Group shares he sold to him in 2013.
A former childhood friend of Bouclin, the businessman, now exiled in Florida, has no illusions about his chances of receiving his due. “It was important to do it to show him that he got there, but we’re not counting on that to get our money back,” he said. We had our little luck by winning our case at court. »
So far, his trustee has only found a boat and bank accounts that “hide no treasure,” he laments.
“His house and even his condo in Florida are owned by trusts,” says Rémi Vigneault. These assets therefore do not appear on Réal Bouclin’s personal balance sheet: trusts are separate entities from the persons who benefit from them.
He says he wants to “ensure the validity” of these montages, he says. He suspects his former partner of having financed them with money from Selection.
By choosing to make a composition proposal under the BIA, Réal Bouclin saves time in order to protect himself from his creditors. He intends to make them a proposal providing for some form of reimbursement. In this type of procedure, creditors generally leave money on the table.
The company, which is owned by French businessmen Luc and Franck Resslen, even threatened to seize his luxurious residence.
FPQ alleges that Groupe Sélection was accumulating overdue interest and that it refused to present its financial statement.
Since Réal Bouclin turned to the BIA, these steps are now on the back burner as well.
Bouclin’s proposal raises serious questions about the continuation of Sélection’s activities – still protected from its creditors – in its current form. The retirement home giant is still liquidating assets at auction to repay its bankers. The chances of seeing its founder recovering pieces of it are slimming.
The president of the Group, however, claims the opposite.
“It should be noted that this gesture has absolutely no impact on the strategy currently deployed to relaunch the company, writes Victor Henriquez, spokesperson for the businessman. Out of respect for the ongoing processes and discussions, Mr. Bouclin will not comment further on the subject at this time. »
Sélection has benefited from the protection of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) for more than nine months now. Insolvent, the property developer and manager of residences for the elderly (RPA) has seen many of its main assets recovered by partners in the context of the current auctions.
The company dumped nearly all of the stakes it held in RPAs and lost what was considered its crown jewel: its stake in the Brewers’ District (the former Molson Brewery), located in the strategic district of Old Montreal. In addition, Groupe Sélection is no longer involved in Espace Montmorency, this multi-use complex of some 450 million including a hotel, shops, residential towers and underground parking.
Since the conclusion of these transactions, only about ten assets remain, mainly land and projects under construction, which remain at auction. Supervised by the PwC controller, this process should be completed soon.
