PSG president Al-Khelaifi charged in French corporate abuse of power probe: source
French judicial authorities have charged the president of Paris Saint-Germain football club, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, with complicity in abuse of power concerning shareholder voting at a company, a source close to the case said Thursday.
Al-Khelaifi was charged on February 5 with complicity in the alleged buying of a vote and harming of freedom to vote over a switch in the voting of a Qatari investment fund on the board of the Lagardere Group in 2018, a judicial source added, with both sources asking not to be named.
The PSG chief, who has led the record 12-times French Ligue 1 champions since its 2011 takeover by Qatar Sports Investments with the dream of making the team Europe's best, has faced several legal cases in recent years but always denied any wrongdoing.
"This file has absolutely and emphatically nothing to do with Nasser Al-Khelaifi, but as usual he will get dragged through a completely spurious process as a famous name, who is apparently responsible for anything and everything, until everything quietly disappears without any grounds whatsoever in a few years," said a source close to the Qatari, also asking not to be named.
Lagardere Group chief Arnaud Lagardere is suspected of having fraudulently used some 125 million euros ($129 million at today's rates) of funds from the group for several years to fund his personal expenses.
The case against Al-Khelaifi, who is known in France as "NAK", concerns a time in 2018 when there was a power struggle on the board between billionaire right-wing tycoon Vincent Bollore, who was allied to the Amber Capital investment fund, and France's richest man Bernard Arnault the boss of the LVMH luxury goods firm who supported Arnaud Lagardere.
On April 24, 2018, Qatar Holding LLC, a subsidiary of the sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and the main shareholder of Lagardere Group, had positioned itself in favour of the resolutions of Amber Capital.
Arnaud Lagardere and his aides are accused of calling their contacts, including Al-Khelaifi in his capacity as a director of the QIA.
Five days after the first vote, the QIA changed its position and voted in favour of the resolutions put forward by Arnaud Lagardere.
The Lagardere Group was bought after a bitter battle at the end of November 2023 by media and publishing giant Vivendi, controlled by the family of Bollore.
A previous indictment against Al-Khelaifi for alleged corruption over Qatar's bids for the 2017 and 2019 World Athletics Championships was definitively annulled in mid-February 2023 by France's Court of Cassation, which ruled that the French justice system was incompetent to prosecute him.
Parisian investigating magistrates are also probing Al-Khelaifi over accusations of the alleged kidnapping and sequestration in Qatar of Franco-Algerian lobbyist Tayeb Benabderrahmane.
Al-Khelaifi denies the accusations and has himself filed a complaint.
gd-sjw/ah/ea
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
1,500-year-old Byzantine tomb complex discovered under Syrian war ruins
A construction worker has unearthed a 1,500-year-old Byzantine tomb complex in the war-torn province of Idlib, northern Syria. The discovery occurred in Maarat al-Numan, a town of strategic importance between Aleppo and Damascus, which saw intense conflict during the Syrian civil war. The area, once a rebel stronghold, was reclaimed by former president Bashar al-Assad's forces in 2020, leaving many homes looted and demolished. As residents return to rebuild following the overthrow of Mr al-Assad in 2024, the chance discovery of stone openings led to the unearthing of ancient graves. Local authorities were promptly alerted, and a team of specialists has been dispatched to inspect and secure the site. Aboveground, it is a residential neighbourhood with rows of cinder-block buildings, many of them damaged in the war. Next to one of those buildings, a pit leads down to the openings of two burial chambers, each containing six stone tombs. The sign of the cross is etched into the top of one stone column. 'Based on the presence of the cross and the pottery and glass pieces that were found, this tomb dates back to the Byzantine era,' said Hassan al-Ismail, director of antiquities in Idlib. He noted that the discovery adds to an already rich collection of archeological sites in the area. Idlib "has a third of the monuments of Syria, containing 800 archaeological sites in addition to an ancient city', Mr al-Ismail said. The Byzantine Empire, which began in the 4th century AD, was a continuation of the Roman empire with its capital in Constantinople – today's Istanbul – and Christianity as its official religion. Abandoned Byzantine-era settlements called Dead Cities stretch across rocky hills and plains in northwest Syria, their weathered limestone ruins featuring remnants of stone houses, basilicas, tombs and colonnaded streets. In the past, the owners of sites where archeological ruins were found sometimes covered them up, fearful that their property would be seized to preserve the ruins, said Ghiath Sheikh Diab, a resident of Maarat al-Numan who witnessed the moment when the tomb complex was uncovered. He said he hoped the new government will fairly compensate property owners in such cases and provide assistance to the displaced people who have returned to the area to find their homes destroyed. The years of war led to significant damage to Syria's archeological sites, not only from bombing but from looting and unauthorised digging. Some see in the ruins a sign of hope for economic renewal. Another local resident, Abed Jaafar, came with his son to explore the newly discovered tombs and take pictures. 'In the old days, a lot of foreign tourists used to come to Maarat just to see the ruins,' he said. 'We need to take care of the antiquities and restore them and return them to the way they were before … and this will help to bring back the tourism and the economy.'
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Greta Thunberg among Gaza-flotilla activists deported from Israel
June 10 (UPI) -- Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was on a flight to France on Tuesday en route home to Sweden after being deported from Israel a day after the Gaza-bound aid yacht she was on was intercepted by the Israeli military off the coast of Egypt and diverted to Israel. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the 22-year-old left the country and posted photos on X of her boarding what appeared to be a commercial flight and sitting in an aisle seat with her belt fastened. It had been only around 12 hours since the British-flagged Madleen arrived at the southern Israeli port of Ashdod under Israeli naval escort late Monday. She was accompanied by at least one French citizen who had also voluntarily agreed to be deported, according to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, but in a post on X, he said five other French nationals in the group would be subject to "a forced expulsion process." Barrot said the detained French citizens had consular access. Le Monde reported that European Parliament Member Rima Hassan was among the French contingent detained. The status of the other five people aboard the vessel -- from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and Brazil -- was unclear, but the Foreign Ministry said those who refused to sign deportation documents and leave Israel would be brought before a judicial authority, in accordance with Israeli law, to authorize their deportation. It stressed that all the detainees had met with officials from their respective consulates. Israeli authorities, which have dismissed the mission by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition as a publicity stunt by celebrities, dubbing the effort the "selfie yacht," attempted to sway the activists by showing them a graphic 43-minute video of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on the orders of Israeli President Israel Katz. "I instructed the IDF to show the flotilla passengers the video of the horrors of the Oct. 7 massacre when they arrive at the port of Ashdod. It is appropriate that the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas supporters see exactly who the Hamas terrorist organization they came to support and for whom they work is, what atrocities they committed against women, the elderly, and children, and against whom Israel is fighting to defend itself," Katz wrote on X. Katz claimed the group refused to continue watching once they found out what it was about. The FFC posted on social media in the early hours of Monday that the Madleen was under siege in international waters off Egypt, "surrounded by quadcopters", being doused with "a white irritant substance," and that its communications systems had been electronically jammed. "The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo -- including baby formula, food and medical supplies -- confiscated," it said in a statement. Israel issued photos of activists being handed sandwiches and water by Israeli military personnel with a caption stating the group were on their way to Israel and "in good spirits, but the Israeli version of events was disputed by Thunberg in a video released by FFC. "If you see this video we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel," she said in the 25 second clip on X in which she also urged her family and friends to lobby the Swedish government to push for their release as soon as possible. The Madleen set sail from Catania on Sicily, loaded with life-saving supplies on June 1 in an effort to break an 80-day blockade on international aid entering Gaza imposed by Israel after it pulled out of a U.S.-brokered cease-fire deal that lasted from January to March. In early May, Thunberg was scheduled to board another FFC vessel, the 1,000-ton Conscience, attempting to sail to Gaza when it was badly damaged in an alleged drone strike off Malta in the western Mediterranean. FFC said the vessel had been en route to Malta to pick up volunteers from at least 21 countries who had traveled to the island to join the mission when it was attacked, among them Thunberg and retired U.S. Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. In May 2010, nine people involved in a similar mission to Gaza were killed and many others seriously wounded when Israeli forces intercepted the Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla of six vessels, in international waters. A U.N. Panel of Inquiry ruled that the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force by Israeli forces during their takeover of the vessel were unacceptable and that they had provided no satisfactory explanation for any of the nine deaths, all of which were from gunshot wounds. "There was significant mistreatment of passengers by Israeli authorities after the takeover of the vessels had been completed through until their deportation. This included physical mistreatment, harassment and intimidation, unjustified confiscation of belongings and the denial of timely consular assistance." However, the report noted that Israeli Defense Forces personnel were confronted by significant, organized and violent resistance when they boarded the Mavi Marmara, requiring them to defend themselves, and that three soldiers were taken hostage and several others wounded. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Axios
an hour ago
- Axios
Exclusive: Mistral debuts its first reasoning models
French AI startup Mistral is launching its first reasoning models, aiming to rival new offerings from OpenAI, DeepSeek and others, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Reasoning models aim to boost accuracy by using more computing power at inference time, a trend gaining steam amid diminishing returns from building ever-larger language models. Driving the news: Mistral is releasing two versions of its new Magistral family of reasoning models. The first, Magistral Small, is a 24-billion-parameter model that is being released under an open-source license. Magistral Medium is more powerful, but proprietary and currently available only in preview mode. Mistral says the new models are designed for a range of real-world tasks in areas including law, finance, health care, and engineering. The proprietary version, Mistral says, is capable of 1,000 tokens per second, outpacing the performance of rivals. Between the lines: Unlike many models that reason primarily in English, Mistral's can "think" in the query's native language, a potentially more efficient approach. The big picture: Based in France, Mistral has benefited from both its embrace of open source as well as the fact that it offers an alternative to the large American and Chinese tech companies. Just 15 months after launching its first paid products, Mistral has racked up over $100 million in contracted sales, according to a source familiar with its finances. What they're saying: Anjney Midha from a16z, who led the company's Series A funding round and sits on its board, said that Mistral's focus on open source is its key selling point, even more than its unique geography. Midha noted that while big shifts in technology tend to be initially led by proprietary efforts, businesses quickly gravitate toward the advantages of open source.
