The French justice investigation into the controversial award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar is progressing. According to information from World, police officers from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Fiscal Offenses (OCLCIFF) questioned as witnesses, in the premises of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Swiss Confederation (MPC) in Zurich, Thursday 25 and Friday 26 November, Sepp Blatter, 85, the former Swiss president of the International Football Federation (FIFA), in the presence of his lawyer, Mr.e Lorenz Erni.
This hearing, which lasted more than six hours in total, was conducted by the investigating judges and investigators in charge of the case on the basis of a request for mutual legal assistance made to the Swiss authorities by the Paris Court of Appeal. It is part of the judicial investigation opened in 2019 by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) for “active and passive corruption”, as well as for “concealment and laundering” of these crimes.
In April 2017, two PNF magistrates heard Sepp Blatter as a witness in Zurich while a preliminary investigation had been opened on the conditions of attribution of the World Cup 2022. Initially, the investigators wanted to re-interview him in Paris. But the ex-patriarch of world football had indicated that he would answer their questions in Switzerland: he hardly leaves his native country since the American justice opened a series of judicial inquiries in 2015 against several dignitaries north and south. – FIFA Americans.
“Qatar had to thank France”
During the hearing of Mr. Blatter, one of the subjects raised was a lunch at the Elysee Palace organized on November 23, 2010 by Nicolas Sarkozy. The French magistrates seek to verify whether a corruptive pact was concluded during this meeting to which the President of the Republic had invited Michel Platini, president of the Union of European Football Associations, the current Emir of Qatar, Tamim Ben Hamad Al Thani, as well as his prime minister.
Heard in police custody in June 2019 in the premises of the OCLCIFF, in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), Michel Platini is suspected by investigators of having voted in favor of Qatar at the request of Mr. Sarkozy, during the award ballot organized by FIFA on 2 December 2010.
” Without Sarkozy’s last-minute intervention on Platini, Qatar would never have had the World Cup, recently reaffirmed Sepp Blatter at World. Especially since, if the sale of PSG to Qatar took place after the vote, it is because it is 100% linked. Qatar had to thank France a little. “
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