The daughter of a French company head who committed suicide just before Christmas because of business worries has launched an internet appeal for funds to pay salaries owed to his former employees.
Fanny Gamelin, whose father Joel Gamelin killed himself on Dec. 23, said she had been overwhelmed by the response to the appeal on Facebook for money to cover his company's December salaries.
"I wanted to pay tribute to my father and I never thought it would have this impact," she told Reuters.
She said her father, head of Chantiers Gamelin, a specialist in aluminium boatbuilding, had been in despair after his firm ran into trouble and left a message that said "Forgive me for not having been able to save the company."
"I saw him the day he committed suicide," she said. "He had just had a telephone call and when he hung up, he started crying and told me 'I can't pay the workers at the end of the month'."
Like many businesses in the financial crisis, Gamelin's firm, which built the yacht "L'Oreal" on which yachtswoman Maud Fontenoy set an around the world record in 2007, had been unable to obtain credit from banks when orders dried up.
"My father said 'I've never asked anything of anyone and the day I do, they shut the door on me'. It really hit him," Fanny Gamelin said.
On her Facebook appeal, now translated into several languages including Arabic, German and English, she said that if 200,000 people donated 1 euro ($1.40) each, all the wages would be given to the 120 families to get them through one more month. (http://fr-fr.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56065731969).
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