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🇫🇷 France /Crime & Justice

Qatar 2022: Financial prosecutors seek trial for four people in Polynesian case

From Le Figaro · () French

Translated from French and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources In the courts
  • France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office has requested a trial for four people in the Polynesian strand of the investigation into Qatar’s award of the 2022 World Cup.
  • The case involves former Tahitian FIFA official Reynald Temarii and former FIFA vice-president Mohamed Bin Hammam, whom prosecutors suspect of corrupting the tournament vote.
  • Investigating judges will decide whether the defendants go to trial, while Bin Hammam remains subject to an international arrest warrant.

French financial prosecutors want four people sent to trial in the Polynesian strand of the long-running investigation into how Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office made the request in late August, according to an announcement reported on Wednesday. The case concerns former Tahitian FIFA vice-president Reynald Temarii and Qatari businessman Mohamed Bin Hammam, a former FIFA and Asian Football Confederation vice-president. A Paris investigation has examined the matter since 2019.

There had never been any corruption.

— Reynald TemariiTemarii made the denial when he was charged in May 2023.

Prosecutors are seeking to try Temarii for passive private corruption. When authorities charged him in May 2023, he denied that corruption had occurred and said he was “extremely serene.” In October 2022, he told AFP that he had himself been “the victim of fraud.”

Extremely serene.

— Reynald TemariiTemarii described his state of mind when rejecting the corruption allegations.

The prosecution accuses Bin Hammam of active private corruption. French investigators suspect he paid Temarii’s legal-defense costs after FIFA suspended the Tahitian official for violating its ethics code. By appealing the suspension, Temarii prevented a replacement from taking part in the vote. That replacement would have supported Australia and, if Australia failed, the United States, Qatar’s main rivals.

Bin Hammam has faced an international arrest warrant since June 2023 and received a lifetime ban from football bodies after corruption and conflict-of-interest accusations. The other requested defendants are consultant Jean-Charles Brisard and his former wife, Géraldine Lesieur, who had been Temarii’s lawyer. Prosecutors want them tried for fraud and handling corruption proceeds. Investigating judges must now decide whether to refer the case to the Paris criminal court.

The victim of fraud.

— Reynald TemariiHe used this phrase in an AFP interview in October 2022 about the case.
About this summary

Originally published by Le Figaro in French. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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