Photographers Dominique Aubert, Derek Hudson, Philippe Ledru, Moshe Milner and Michel Philippot, who used to work for the Sygma picture agency, have, on Wednesday, filed claims against Corbis over the liquidation of the prestigious French institution, has revealed La Lettre de la Photographie.

In February, Corbis announced it would close down Sygma after it was hit with a massive €1.5m fine. Corbis had been found guilty of losing 750 images that belonged to Aubert. The French photographer had worked for Sygma from 1987 until 1995. In 2003, he found out that 750 of his images went missing from the 250,000 he had shot while at Sygma. Under French law, a photographer retains his rights on all of his images, including when he works for a press agency.

Finding the fine "immensely disproportionate to the revenue opportunity with the images" and given previous decisions, and other likely future lawsuits," Corbis came to the conclusion that "it is no longer possible to maintain Sygma," said a spokeswoman at the time.

Now, the five photographers are accusing Corbis of misuing corporate assets for  transferring Sygma's assets to its US-based corporation without financial compensation for its France-based organisation - Corbis France. Furthermore, the photographers are claiming that Corbis asked Sygma's contributors to transfer their rights to Corbis in the US, again, without compensation for Corbis France.

As a result of the transfer of Sygma's assets, Corbis France was left without any financial power to pay its €1.5m fine to Aubert.

The photographers have therefore filed three claims against Corbis for the misuse of Corbis France's corporate assets, as well as for filing a fraudulent bankruptcy claim and breach of trust.

A spokesman for Corbis had yet to return BJP's requests for comment. UPDATE: "Complaint has no merit," says Corbis.

More on Sygma's liquidation:

Sygma was launched in 1973. It quickly became one of the leading photo agencies in the world, representing photographers such as Allen Tannenbaum, Les Stone and Andrew Lichtenstein. The Sygma archive also includes images from the 1950s and 60s obtained from Apis, Universal Photo, Interpress, Spitzer, Reporter Associes and other agencies.

In the 1990s it changed hands several times, but in 1999 Bill Gates acquired it through Corbis. It was not a painless acquisition. In 2001, 90 employees, including 42 photographers, were made redundant after weeks of protests and strikes. Since then, the agency has been inactive, with no new content submitted in the archives, and former Sygma photographers now known as Corbis contributors.

In 2009, Corbis created Corbis France, as well as Corbis-Sygma, a subsidiary of Corbis France. Corbis contacted more than 10,000 former Sygma contributors to gain authorisation to commercialise the collection via Corbis France. Around 850 of them have signed a new contract with Corbis, while the remaining images - "around 25% of the entire archives" according to Corbis - stayed under the Corbis-Sygma umbrella.

However, in May last year, Corbis announced that it would shut the Corbis-Sygma company."This is a very difficult decision because we've spent more than a decade investing time and money to preserve and make accessible to the world the work of Sygma photographers," said a Corbis spokeswoman at the time. "We've been forced to seek liquidation of the business because, despite our best efforts and investment of tens of millions of Euros, we have been unable to resolve issues that Corbis inherited with the Sygma acquisition."

She added: "Prior to its acquisition by Corbis, Sygma lost a relatively small number of images as a result of lax library management procedures. Some photographers have subsequently taken legal action against Sygma."