The complaint filed by former Paris Saint-Germain player Kadidiatou Diani constitutes a “liberation of speech”, her lawyer Me Sandrine Pegand reacted for AFP on Thursday, the day after the revelation of the existence of a investigation into acts of sexual assault targeting his ex-trainer Didier Ollé-Nicolle. A preliminary investigation was opened at the end of June after a complaint was filed by Ms. Diani, according to the Versailles prosecutor’s office. This targets two gestures attributed to the ex-coach, who allegedly touched Diani’s buttocks in August 2021, including once with a mini baseball bat.
“This complaint (is) used as a settling of scores,” denounces Didier Ollé-Nicolle in a press release published Thursday by his lawyer Me Guilaume Traynard. The former coach of the football club “denounces (an) attempt to exploit justice”. According to him, this complaint “apparently targets two-year-old facts of which he knows nothing” and comes shortly after he became a civil party in proceedings targeting Ms. Diani’s companion, César Mavacala, indicted for “fraud in an organized gang.
Suspicions brushed aside by Me Sandrine Pégand. “I am here to take care of a woman who is the victim of acts of a sexual nature. It was complicated for her to denounce these facts in her capacity as a player,” “there was the fear that this could reflect on many things and in particular her career,” she recalls. “And then when the reminiscences become too heavy, there is a liberation of speech. There is no timing strategy,” she insists.
According to a source close to the matter, the Parisian club launched an internal investigation when the facts concerned were reported. The coach was then fired and players, including Kadidiatou Diani, as well as the former coach were questioned. Still according to this source, the internal investigation did not demonstrate any breach by Didier Ollé-Nicolle, who remained in office. He will finally be sidelined at the end of May 2022, to investigate accusations of “inappropriate” behavior towards another player, which he disputed before investigators, before leaving the club amicably at the end of August. same year.
On May 15, 2022, a judicial investigation against Asked by AFP, the club did not wish to comment. Didier Ollé-Nicolle announced his intention to soon file a complaint for “slanderous denunciation”.