Nasser Al-Khelaïfi was not in the bright room of the Swiss Federal Criminal Court (TPF) in Bellinzona, Tuesday March 8, on the second day of his appeal trial, when the prosecutor Cristina Castellote demanded against him twenty-eight months of “custodial sentence” for the count of “aggravated instigation to unfair management”. The president of Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) and the Qatari group BeIN Media had left the capital of Ticino the evening before, as soon as his audition was over, to join Madrid, where the club of the capital disputes against the Real, Wednesday, his round of 16 return from the Champions League.
Acquitted at first instance, in October 2020, the Qatari leader was therefore unable to hear the long and implacable indictment of the Public Prosecutor of the Confederation (MPC) in the context of the proceedings against him and Jérôme Valcke, the former secretary general. French from the International Football Federation (FIFA).
The Swiss prosecution has this time requested prison sentences against the Qatari and the former FIFA number two (thirty-five months of detention required against the latter) without matching them with a partial reprieve.
For four hours, the prosecutor methodically dismantled the arguments of the defense while projecting on the screen evidence collected (exchanges of e-mails, correspondence, documents) by the investigators. Standing behind her desk, she recalled that the TPF had estimated in its judgment of October 2020, “that it is established that the defendants entered into a corrupt arrangement, notwithstanding their acquittal” as part of the attribution, in 2014, of the media rights for the 2026 and 2030 World Cups to the Qatari groups Al-Jazeera and BeIN.
“Undue advantages”
For meme Castellote, in return for the granting of these rights, Mr. Valcke benefited from Mr. Al-Khelaïfi “undue advantages” worth between 1.4 million and 2.3 million euros, of which “exclusive use without paying rent”, from March 2014 to September 2015, of a villa in Sardinia. According to the MPC, it was the leader of PSG who acquired Villa Bianca, in 2013, against 5 million euros, via a Qatari company, Golden Home Real Estate, of which he “was the sole shareholder and signatory”.
The prosecutor returned to the underside of this ” corrupt pact sealed on October 24, 2013 in Paris between Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and Jérôme Valcke, who were financially strangled at the time and eager to acquire the famous villa in Sardinia.
According to Mme Castellote, Mr. Valcke first evokes “two options for financing the purchase of this villa”including a salary advance of 5.5 million euros paid by the emirate in the event that the Frenchman “would be hired in September 2014” by the Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) fund, managed by Mr. Al-Khelaïfi.
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