The former Tahitian vice-president of FIFA Reynald Temarii, indicted at the beginning of the week for passive corruption in the investigation in Paris on the attribution of the World Cup-2022 to Qatar, refuted these accusations on Sunday and said to himself “serene”, on the Polynesian channel TNTV.
“It’s a non-event, the truth does not change, there has never been corruption,” said Saturday (Sunday Paris time) Reynald Temarii on the set of the local channel, saying he was “surprised” of his indictment, but ensuring to be “extremely serene”.
“With my lawyers, we are waiting for the documents we have requested to understand” the reasons for this indictment which, according to him, could be linked to the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal to change the investigating judges to charge of his file.
This indictment, the first in this case, was served on Mr. Temarii by the investigating judges in charge of the case in a letter dated May 22. He had been placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness since November 2021.
In this part of the judicial investigation opened in 2019 in Paris on the designation of the emirate as host country, the investigating judges are interested in the volte-face of Mr. Temarii, former president of the Oceanian Football Confederation (OFC), the day before the World Cup was awarded to Qatar.
Suspended for one year by FIFA in November 2010 for violation of the code of ethics, Reynald Temarii could no longer sit on the executive committee on December 2, 2010 for the vote.
The OFC therefore had to appoint a replacement who would have granted his vote to Australia in the first round of voting and then, in the event of failure, to the United States, Qatar’s main rivals.
However, Mr. Temarii appealed against his suspension on the night of November 30 to December 1, when he had previously announced that he accepted the sanction and that he did not have the reasons given by the ethics committee allowing him to do so. By appealing, according to the statutes of Fifa, he deprived the OFC of a representative during the vote. On December 2, 2010, Qatar won ahead of the United States, yet favorites.
Last October, Reynald Temarii told AFP that he himself had been “victim of fraud” in the case and had denied “any corruption pact”.
A former strongman of Tahitian football, Mr. Temarii is still active in the Polynesian sports world, particularly in the popular canoe races.
On the other hand, he has no official activity in football since Fifa suspended him for eight years for violating the code of ethics in 2015. The suspension ended on May 15.