Phew of relief for Nasser Al-Khelaifi. According to a judgment of the Court of Cassation, French justice is incompetent to prosecute on suspicions of corruption targeting the boss of PSG around the candidacies for the World Athletics Championships (2017 and 2019). Consequence of this decision, which is final: the indictment for active corruption of the Qatari, pronounced on May 23, 2019, is canceled.
“I am delighted with this decision which is in accordance with the law and I recall that Nasser Al-Khelaïfi has always denied having committed the slightest offense in this case”, reacted Me Francis Szpiner, lawyer for Nasser Al-Khelaïfi with Me Renaud Semerdjian.
The lawyers of Yousif Al-Obaidli, commercial director of the Al-Jazeera channel indicted for the same offence, joined in this appeal. The decision of the Court of Cassation, handed down on Wednesday, also puts an end to the proceedings against him.
Two installments of $3.5 million in question
The highest court of the judiciary considered that there was no “indivisibility” of the alleged acts of corruption committed in France and abroad.
The suspicions relate to two payments totaling $3.5 million, made in the fall of 2011 by the company Oryx Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) – headed by Khalid Al-Khelaïfi, Nasser’s brother – for the benefit of a sports marketing company headed by Papa Massata Diack, son of the former president of the International Athletics Federation (IAAF), Lamine Diack. Papa Massata Diack, nicknamed “PMD” in the media, has long managed the IAAF’s marketing rights file.
Give-and-take?
The investigating judges and the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal relied on a meeting at the Hotel Negresco in Nice, therefore on French territory, and a transfer of two million dollars made on an account in France, to justify the jurisdiction of the French courts to carry out investigations into these suspicions. Qatar would have received in return the support of the former big boss of athletics Lamine Diack to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships, organized by the IAAF, and the 2020 Olympic Games. The death of Lamine Diack in December 2021 terminated the criminal proceedings against him.
