By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 21 minutes ago
Saïd Chabane Federico Pestellini / Federico Pestellini / Panoramic
The trial of Saïd Chabane, ex-president and current owner of the Angers football club (L2), prosecuted for aggravated sexual assault, will be held Monday and Tuesday before the city’s criminal court.
He must be tried for seven sexual assaults “committed by a person abusing the authority conferred on him by his position“. Owner of SCO Angers since 2011, Saïd Chabane, 59, was indicted in February 2020 following complaints from several women, at the time employees of the club or his charcuterie company. The complainants denounce facts spanning from 2014 to 2019, when they were, among other things, hostess, secretary or customer service representative at the SCO in Angers. The first four complaints collected agreed “on the procedure used by the author», Said the Angers public prosecutor Eric Bouillard at the time of the indictment.
The magistrate then mentioned the use of “surprise» et «of a certain constraint”, linked to “respect» that the man inspired in his victims, to “touching their private parts». «My client is determined to repeat in court what she told investigators. She was a victim of acts and wants to join the actions taken by other victims», Declared to AFP Me Guillaume Sergent, lawyer for a former employee of SCO Angers, who filed a civil suit. Asked by AFP, Saïd Chabane’s lawyers did not wish to speak before the opening of the trial. Entangled in a succession of affairs and a catastrophic sporting situation, Saïd Chabane gave up his place as president of the club to his son Romain in March. Saïd Chabane must also be tried before the Bobigny criminal court in March 2024 for illegal exercise of the activity of sports agent and organized gang money laundering. Arriving at the head of the club and in its capital in 2011, he was one of the main players in the spectacular recovery of the SCO on a sporting level during the years that followed, including a return to L1 in 2015.
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Relegated at the end of the 2022/2023 season which was one of the worst ever recorded by a club in the French elite, and marked by the departure of coach Abdel Bouazhama after making sexist remarks in the locker room, the SCO raised his head. At the top of Ligue 2 after 17 days, he is one of the favorites for accession to Ligue 1 next May.
