Lausanne (AFP)
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter remains "at the disposal of French justice" in the investigation into the conditions for the award of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, "if the hearing takes place in Switzerland, "he told AFP on Wednesday.
"I am not ready to come to France for a hearing, but I am at the disposal of French justice if the hearing takes place in Switzerland," said Mr. Blatter.
The ex-president of Fifa, still suspended for a controversial payment to Michel Platini, thus uses the terms of a letter sent Wednesday by his lawyer Lorenz Erni to the French police.
Mr. Blatter had however declared on December 11 to AFP that he would testify in France, if the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) "officially asked him".
The 83-year-old former boss of world football was already heard in this case in Switzerland on April 20, 2017, at the request of the PNF, he said in December.
The investigation into the conditions for the award of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, conducted for three years under the aegis of the PNF, was entrusted last December to a Paris investigating judge. This judicial inquiry was opened notably for "active and passive corruption".
"We want to see Mr. Blatter, in France or Switzerland, I don't know when," said an investigator from the Central Office for the fight against corruption and financial and fiscal offenses (OCLCIFF) on Wednesday, joined by AFP.
"French justice will ask to hear it," added this source.
The opening of judicial information aims to shed light on the conditions under which Fifa entrusted Qatar with the organization of the 2022 World Cup, on December 2, 2010.
She intervened six months after the hearing of Michel Platini, placed in police custody in the premises of OCLCIFF, but also of the former sport adviser of Nicolas Sarkozy, Sophie Dion, and the ex-secretary general of the Elysée Claude Guéant, heard during a free hearing.
Vice-president of Fifa and president of UEFA at the time of the attribution of the World championship 2022, Platini had in particular been questioned on the reasons for his vote in favor of Qatar.
At the heart of suspicion: a meeting organized at the Palais de l'Elysée on November 23, 2010, in which President Nicolas Sarkozy, but also Tamim ben Hamad al-Thani - then Crown Prince of Qatar who became emir in 2013 - and Platini participated.
The investigators wonder if the object of this lunch, organized only nine days before the poll, was not to tip the vote of Platini, long acquired for the American candidacy, and if counterparts took place in exchange for this vote.
© 2020 AFP