Three investigating judges from the Paris court have been appointed to investigate the accusations of kidnapping, sequestration and torture of a Franco-Algerian lobbyist which notably target the boss of PSG Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and in connection with the possession of documents. sensitive, we learned Monday from a judicial source.
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This 42-year-old lobbyist, Tayeb Benabderrahmane, had filed a complaint in 2022 with a civil action, a procedure which makes it possible to obtain almost systematically judicial information, for torture, kidnapping and forcible confinement.
Judicial information was opened at the end of January, indicated a judicial source, confirming information from France Inter, and three investigating judges were co-seized.
“
We are very happy that the real file of this story is finally the subject of an investigation by the French justice
”, reacted to AFP the lawyers of Mr. Benabderrahmane, Mes Romain Ruiz and Gabriel Vejnar.
Arrest in Qatar
In this complaint, their client denounces his arrest in January 2020 in Qatar, where he had settled three months earlier to lobby.
He claims to have been imprisoned there for six months and tortured, then placed under house arrest and finally authorized to leave in November of the same year, after having signed a confidentiality protocol in which he undertook not to divulge "sensitive" documents
.
on Nasser Al-Khelaïfi.
It could be intimate videos of the PSG boss with his mistress and conversations contained in a phone that belonged to him with Jérôme Valcke (Fifa) and the Emir of Qatar Tamim ben Hamad Al Thani, linked to the organization of the World Cup in Qatar or the allocation of TV rights, according to a note from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) and the General Inspectorate of National Police (IGPN).
Mr. Al-Khelaïfi, also president of the beIn Media group, and Mr. Valcke, who were suspected of having concluded a pact behind Fifa's back in a TV rights case linked to the 2026 and 2030 Worlds, were acquitted in Switzerland in October 2020, then on appeal in June 2022. Mr. Al-Khelaïfi's lawyers did not wish to speak, recalling that they were subject to professional secrecy.
Influence peddling and corruption
Mr. Benabderrahmane, who was assisted in 2020 by Qatari and French lawyers, launched proceedings to have this confidentiality protocol canceled.
The possession of these documents, considered compromising, was revealed during the indictment at the end of September of Mr. Benabderrahmane and two former police officers in a separate judicial investigation for influence peddling and corruption around the PSG, relating in particular to the information on Nasser Al-Khelaïfi that the lobbyist would have held and which could have been used as blackmail.
