Counter attack. “We deplore the orchestrated, directed, fragmented and truncated violations of professional secrecy, the secrecy of the investigation and the secrecy of the instruction, which have the sole objective of distorting the reality of the facts and putting pressure on the justice and on public opinion”, write in a press release sent to Le Figaro Mes Renaud Semerdjian and Francis Szpiner.
The counsel assures that their client is a “civil party” in the judicial information known as the “barbouzeries” of Paris Saint-Germain, and that Nasser Al-Khelaïfi is “a victim in particular of attacks on the dignity of his person and his reputation “.
“We have noticed for several weeks numerous publications in different media containing a partial selection of elements and documents from current information,” denounce the two lawyers. They therefore “seized complaints about these violations to the Paris public prosecutor’s office on January 18,” specify Mess. Semerdjian and Szpiner.
As part of the judicial investigation linked to PSG, relating in particular to acts of corruption and influence peddling, searches were carried out on Monday at the French Ministry of Economy and Finance. The investigations aim to determine whether PSG benefited from a tax favor during the transfer of Brazilian striker Neymar in 2017 from Barcelona.
These suspicions are part of an investigation carried out since September 2022 around influence operations attributed to the club’s former communications director, Jean-Martial Ribes, 57 years old.
As part of another judicial investigation, Parisian investigating judges are looking into accusations of kidnapping, sequestration and torture in Qatar, of which the Franco-Algerian lobbyist Tayeb Benabderrahmane is said to have been a victim, targeting in particular “NAK”. Messrs Szpiner and Semerdjian announced a defamation complaint in April after statements by the lobbyist in the press.
The president of the Parisian football club is also the target of two investigations for concealed work, after a complaint from his butler Hicham Karmoussi and a complaint from another of his ex-advisors.