Ajaccio (AFP)

Several tax officials from Haute-Corse were taken into custody on Thursday at the Ajaccio judicial police in the context of an investigation into financial crimes of the football club SC Bastia, in compulsory liquidation, has it been learned from consistent sources.

These police custody of officials from the departmental public finance department of Haute-Corse aim to understand why this club has been able to benefit from tax planning for years and whether there has been "excessive support" from the tax authorities. , explained to AFP these sources.

Contacted by AFP, the Bastia prosecution did not comment on this case.

In February 2019, a chartered accountant and an auditor had been indicted in particular for "participation in a criminal association", as part of an open judicial investigation for scam, bankruptcy and abuse of social property in this case . They were placed under judicial supervision.

Several searches between April and June 2018 had made it possible to seize "many bank and accounting documents" and to establish "that the accounting rules and principles had not been respected", said in February 2019 the prosecution of Bastia.

SASP Sporting Club Bastia, former manager of the club administratively relegated to National 3, was placed in compulsory liquidation on September 5, 2017.

The club, which played until the 2016-2017 season in Ligue 1, displayed during its placement in liquidation a debt of 21 million euros, for assets estimated at 10 million euros. He employed 47 employees in his administration and was indebted to a series of island companies.

On the sporting side, the club, taken over since mid-August 2017 by two Bastian entrepreneurs Claude Ferrandi and Pierre-Noël Luiggi, has experienced an interminable tumble. Relegated to L2 on the field at the end of the 2016-2017 season, he was then demoted administratively to National 1 (new name of the National, 3rd division) by the DNCG, the financial gendarme of football, because of his difficulties budget.

The sanction was confirmed on appeal, then by an opinion from the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF). But the DNCG and the Executive Committee of the French Football Federation did not validate the Bastian budget for National 1, the SCB had to eventually evolve into National 3.

© 2020 AFP