France's financial crimes prosecution unit the Parquet national financier (PNF) has opened a judge-led investigation into “passive and active corruption” over the controversial decision by football's governing body FIFA to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, Mediapart has learned.
The judicial probe, which marks a major turning point in the case, will also examine allegations of the receipt and laundering of proceeds from this corruption. The PNF has confirmed to Mediapart that the probe led by an independent judge is under way but declined to say any more.
The move follows a three-year preliminary probe by the PNF and comes after detectives from France's anti-corruption squad OCLCIFF questioned former French football star Michel Platini on June 18th 2019. At the time that FIFA awarded the World Cup in December 2010 Platini was president of European football's ruling body UEFA and vice-president of FIFA itself, and he voted for Qatar to host the tournament.
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On the same day this summer detectives also interviewed two former aides to ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy at the Élysée, his chief of staff, Claude Guéant, and his sports advisor Sophie Dion.
When Michel Platini came out after questioning, his lawyer William Bourdon criticised what he called a “great deal of noise over nothing”. He said that his client was “completely uninvolved in actions which have nothing to do with him”. The lawyer added: “We are both calm and confident about the future.”
Meanwhile the PNF has concluded that the case merits an investigation led by an independent judge who has the power to place individuals under formal investigation, which in French law is one step short of charges being brought. The state prosecutor only has the power to bring charges and send an individual directly for trial.
Though nothing has yet leaked out about the case, it is known that investigators are interested in a secret meeting at the Élysée, details of which were revealed by the football media outlets France Football and So Foot in 2013. It took place on November 23rd 2010, just nine days before the FIFA vote which awarded the World Cup to Qatar. The meeting, which came at a time when France was trying to cultivate a close relationship with the Gulf state, took the form of a lunch hosted by President Sarkozy, with the guests including Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, then Crown Prince of Qatar and now the Gulf state’s ruler, and then UEFA president Michel Platini.
In 2015 Le Monde newspaper confirmed more details of the secret lunch from the Elysée's own official archives. It seems the gathering also included the Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, Sarkozy's chief of staff Claude Gueant and Sophie Dion. Former sports advisor Dion now runs the chair on “ethics and sport security ” at the Sorbonne University in Paris, a post funded by Qatar via the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS).
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According to France Football, at the Élysée meeting the issues that were raised included the “Qataris buying [top Paris football club Paris St Germain] PSG, an increase of [Qatari] shares in the Lagardère [media] group, [and] the creation of a sports channel (BeIN Sports) to compete with [satellite channel] Canal+”. This is all said to have been agreed “in exchange for a promise: that Platini didn't vote for [rival World Cup host candidate] the United States as he had envisaged but for Qatar”.
On December 2nd 2010, nine days after this lunch, Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup. Then seven months later, in June 2011, Qatar bought football club PSG from the US investment fund Colony Capital. And at the end of 2011 Michel Platini's son Laurent was hired by the Qatari sports equipment firm Burrda, a subsidiary of Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), the Gulf state's sovereign investment fund which also owns PSG and BeIN Sports.
The task of the judicial investigation will be to determine if these actions were all simply a coincidence or whether they were indeed the realisation of the alleged arrangement that was agreed during the 2010 lunch at the Élysée.
The probe is very sensitive politically because it will look at the personal role played by the Emir of Qatar at a time when relations between France and the Gulf state are tense. According to La Tribune newspaper, Qatar is “close to turning down” the purchase of French tanks from defence firm Nexter for two billion euros in protest over the fact that the boss of PSG, Nasser al-Khelaifi, has been placed under formal investigation in France in a case involving the award of the athletics World Championships for 2017 and 2019.
The former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has himself suggested publicly that the secret meeting at the Elysée “changed “ things in favour of Qatar. Michel Platini denies all of Blatter's allegations, staying they stem from vengeance aimed at stopping him from becoming FIFA president.
The former French football star insists that during the Élysée lunch Nicolas Sarkozy did not ask him to vote for Qatar, even if he “felt that there was a subliminal message”. His son Laurent has meanwhile insisted that his father played no role in him being hired as director general at Burrda – which he left in 2016 to join the Lagadère group.
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The launch of the judge-led probe comes after the expiry on October 8th of Michel Platini's four-year suspension imposed by FIFA over the affair involving a deferred payment to the UEFA boss. On January 17th 2011, one month after the 2022 World Cup was awarded to Qatar, Platini asked for and received a payment from FIFA of 2 million Swiss francs, the equivalent of 1.8 million euros. According to the Frenchman this payment related to his remuneration when he was an advisor to Sepp Blatter at FIFA between 1998 and 2002. Platini says that in addition to his written contract he had made a “verbal agreement” with Blatter which gave him additional money.
This affair ultimately forced Platini to resign from UEFA and stopped him from seeking the FIFA presidency. In 2015 football's ruling body banned him from all football-related activities for four years, a penalty confirmed on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). However Swiss federal prosecutors, who had opened a criminal investigation into the same case, told Platini in May 2018 that he would “not face charges”, Le Monde has reported.
Feeling that his name had been completely cleared, and after his four-year ban ended, Michel Platini launched a major media and legal counter-attack. He has just published a book, Entre Nous, in which he settles some scores with Sepp Blatter and criticises his suspension by FIFA's ethic committee, likening that body to the “Committee of Public Safety” that was set up during the bloody reign of “Terror” during the French Revolution.
The former UEFA president, who believes he was the victim of a plot to stop him from becoming president of FIFA, has also made a formal complaint in Paris for “defamation” and a “criminal conspiracy aimed at committing the offence of defamation”. He wants proceedings to be started against the FIFA executives who reported the deferred payment affair to Swiss prosecutors.
As Le Monde has revealed, the French prosecution authorities decided at the end of October this year not to investigate Platini's complaints themselves but to pass them to the Swiss authorities. It was a logical move given that FIFA and its executives are based in Zurich and that that body's complaint against Platini had been made to Swiss prosecutors.
On November 8th this year Michel Platini also told news agency AFP that he was seeking from UEFA - the body over which he presided from January 2007 to October 2015 – the payment of back salary plus a bonus “provided in my contract” as well as legal fees. He is apparently planning to take UEFA to an industrial tribunal over his demands.
Since the end of Platini's suspension from football there have been rumours that he might seek the presidency of the French ruling body the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) or that of FIFA in 2023. But the former UEFA boss is maintaining an air of mystery over his precise plans. “I will come back. I don't whom where, I don't know how,” he said in September. “I can't end on a suspension even if it was a suspension carried out by idiots.”
The opening of the judicial investigation into the 2022 World Cup award now, however, will disrupt Platini's counter-attack and his hopes for a possible return.
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter