Did the PSG boss want to destroy compromising documents linked to Qatar’s obtaining of the World Cup, which starts this Sunday? This is what several protagonists claim in a resounding affair described as “total manipulation” by the spokesperson for Nasser Al-Khelaïfi. This story with drawers, mixing suspicions of private espionage, blackmail and accusations of torture, came to light at the end of September, when three men were indicted in Paris for influence peddling and corruption in particular.
Among them, the Franco-Algerian lobbyist Tayeb Benabderrahmane and Malik Nait-Liman, a former intelligence service policeman, hired in 2018 as a supporter referent at PSG. They are suspected of having transmitted confidential information on certain people from police files, in particular to the Parisian club.
But in this case there is another case: Tayeb Benabderrahmane says he was arrested in January 2020 in Qatar, where he had settled three months earlier to lobby. He says he was incarcerated for six months and tortured, then placed under house arrest and finally allowed to leave in November of the same year, after agreeing to sign a confidentiality protocol in which he undertook not to divulge “sensitive” documents. on Nasser Al-Khelaïfi.
What were these documents? Did he try to blackmail the boss of PSG? According to a September 29 report by the General Directorate of Internal Security and the General Inspectorate of the National Police, revealed by Release and consulted by AFP, it could be a part of intimate videos of the boss of PSG with his mistress; on the other hand, conversations contained in a telephone that belonged to Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, with Jérôme Valcke of Fifa and the Emir of Qatar Tamim ben Hamad Al Thani, linked to the organization of the Qatar World Cup or to the allocation of TV rights.
“Cleaning” before search?
How would Tayeb Benabderrahmane find himself in possession of these documents? In police custody, the lobbyist said that Hicham Karmoussi, Moroccan butler of Nasser Al-Khelaïfi for twenty years, dismissed in June 2020, had asked him in 2018 to put in a safe place in Algeria a mobile phone, a hard drive and a USB key containing data relating to the boss of PSG. He had also given him an extract of the data from the phone of the latter.
Hicham Karmoussi told Mediapart on Friday that he had helped Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, worried about the investigations in France and Switzerland targeting him, to “clean” his Parisian apartment before a possible search and to have kept certain things in his possession. He says he gave “only the phone” to Tayeb Benabderrahmane.
“More and more fanciful lies”
Hicham Karmoussi, whose home was searched on October 20, was heard on Tuesday as a witness at the anti-corruption office (Oclciff) responsible for investigating the conditions for awarding the World Cup. For his part, Tayeb Benabderrahmane filed two complaints in August with civil action in Paris: the first for torture, arrest and kidnapping, where he denounces his imprisonment in Qatar, and the second for extortion and witness tampering, targeting the role lawyers who worked on the signing of the protocol.
“Never has there been a clearer example of total and brazen manipulation of the media – lies and fabrications by individuals seeking to distract from the fact that they are being prosecuted for a multitude of crimes against a series of people”, reacted to AFP a spokesperson for Nasser Al-Khelaïfi. The protagonists of this case “have changed their stories more than they have changed lawyers – and the lies are becoming more and more fanciful week by week”, sweeps the spokesperson. “We will calmly let the legal proceedings follow their course and it is the law that will prevail in the end”.
