Platini: "I am foreign to the facts". The collaborators: "It is not an arrest but an interrogation"
ROME – Michel Platini "has absolutely nothing to reproach himself and claims to be totally foreign to the facts ". This was reported by a press release from former UEFA president's collaborators. "It is not in any way an arrest but is heard as a witness , in a condition desired by the investigators that allows to avoid that the listened persons can agree outside the procedure", specifies the press release released by the French media.
The former president of UEFA was stopped by police in France for the case concerning the procedures for awarding the World Cup in 2022 to Qatar : the former president of UEFA is interrogated, at the offices of the judicial police of Nanterre where at this time, in the investigation into "alleged acts of active and passive corruption of non-public employees", opened by the National Public Prosecutor's Office for financial crimes (Pnf). The news was reported by the French news site Mediapart, which was later confirmed by other media across the Alps.
Sophie Dion, Sports Councilor of Nicolas Sarkozy at the time when he was President of the Republic, was also detained with the former Juventus champion. Another loyal member of the former president, Claude Guéant, a former interior minister and former general secretary of the Elysée during Sarkozy's presidency, was interrogated on the loose.
The three, reports Le Monde , had been summoned by the Central Office for Combating Corruption and financial and tax infringements. Platini, already suspended by Fifa for "violation of the code of ethics" until October, was initially to be heard as a witness.
The NDP investigation started in 2016 and Platini – who admitted in the past that he voted in favor of Qatar in December 2010 – had already been heard as a witness in 2017. The PNF, points out Le Monde, is interested in particular to the dinner organized on 23 November 2010 at the Elysée, in the presence of Sarkozy, Platini, the current Qatari emir Tamim Ben Hamad Al Thani and the then Prime Minister Hamad Ben Jassem.
At that lunch, continues Le Monde, citing his own sources, Dion and Guéant were also present . Guéant has already been condemned in the past for removing public funds and called directly into the case of the alleged funding of Muammar Gaddafi for Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, a case in which the former president himself came under investigation (source: Ansa ).
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Source: Blitz Quotidiano