Zurich (AFP)

The former president of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, will go to testify in France in the investigation on the conditions of attribution of the Soccer World Cup 2022 in Qatar, if the National Public Prosecutor's Office "officially asks him", has he said Wednesday in an interview with AFP.

"If they ask me officially, I think I will go to France because I have a clear conscience," said Blatter.

The former head of world football, aged 83, has already been heard in this case "in Switzerland, April 20, 2017, at the request of the French National Financial Office (PNF)," he said.

The investigation into the conditions for awarding the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, conducted for three years under the auspices of the PNF, was recently entrusted to a Paris magistrate. This judicial information was opened especially for "active and passive corruption", said the prosecution Monday.

This decision comes about six months after the hearing of Michel Platini, under the regime of custody. Then vice-president of FIFA and UEFA president at the time of the award of the Mondial-2022, the French had been questioned on the reasons for his vote in favor of Qatar on December 2, 2010.

French justice is particularly interested in a meeting at the Elysee Palace on November 23, 2010, attended by President Nicolas Sarkozy, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani - then Crown Prince of Qatar became emir in 2013-- and Michel Platini.

His supposed goal: to make sure that the latter would vote for the emirate. A "tissue of lies" had outraged the former number 10 of the Blues.

"When Platini said that he would have voted for Qatar anyway, especially for the development of football, it is not true.We had a consensus within the Executive Committee of FIFA, which planned to award the World Cup -2018 to Russia and the World-2022 in the United States ", repeated Mr. Blatter.

"Everything went well until eight days of the election when there was this famous dinner at the Elysee Platini phoned me immediately after.He told me: + Sepp, it's wrong walking, we will have a problem for the election. + President Sarkozy had asked him, suggested, to vote for Qatar, "said Blatter, who reported this telephone conversation to the Swiss judge in April 2017.

Mr. Blatter continues to serve a six-year suspension for a separate case, the disputed payment of 2 million Swiss francs (1.84 million euros) to Mr. Platini, who in October completed a suspension of four years.

© 2019 AFP