Jérôme Valcke, ex-number 2 of Fifa, and Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, boss of beIN Media and PSG, have been appearing since Monday, September 14 in Switzerland in a TV rights case.

Accompanied by their lawyers, the two leaders arrived at the beginning of the morning at the Federal Court of Bellinzona, which opened one of the first hearings intended to settle five years of scandals around Fifa.

Main defendant, Frenchman Jérôme Valcke, right-hand man until 2015 of ousted FIFA president Sepp Blatter, has to explain himself in two separate cases of television rights and faces five years in prison.

Justice accuses him of having favored the transfer to the Qatari giant beIN Media of the rights in the Middle East and North Africa of the 2026 and 2030 World Cups, in exchange for "the exclusive use" of a villa in Sardinia, paid 5 million euros by Nasser Al-Khelaïfi.

"Unfair management"

Long conducted for "private corruption", the investigation had to drop this charge because of an "amicable agreement" in January between Fifa and Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, which led the body to withdraw its complaint.

The prosecution has therefore opted for the field of "unfair management": he now accuses Jérôme Valcke of having "kept for him" advantages which should have gone to Fifa, even if they were bribes. -vin, and to Nasser Al-Khelaïfi for having "incited" him to do so.

The two men dispute these charges, according to their defense. 

In the second case, Jérôme Valcke will have to answer for "repeated passive corruption", "aggravated unfair management" and "false titles", alongside the Greek businessman Dinos Deris, 63 years old.

Jérôme Valcke would have this time received 1.25 million euros, in three payments from Liechtenstein to his company Sportunited, to promote the obtaining of the media rights of several World Cups in Greece and Italy.

Complainant in these two cases, Fifa claims "between 1.4 and 2.3 million euros" to Jérôme Valcke for having benefited for 18 months from the "Villa Bianca", a luxurious building on the Sardinian Emerald Coast.

She is also asking for 1.25 million euros from her former secretary general and Dinos Deris.

But the accusation is weakened by the suspicions of collusion born of three secret meetings in 2016 and 2017 between the boss of Fifa, Gianni Infantino, and the former head of the Swiss public prosecutor's office, Michael Lauber, forced to resign in July.

The two men have been targeted since this summer by an investigation for "obstructing criminal proceedings", even if FIFA insists that these meetings, although omitted from the procedure, were intended to show its intention to "collaborate with Swiss justice" .

Fifa, in the crosshairs of justice

In addition to this trial, Fifa is the subject of a multitude of procedures.

The most embarrassing investigation for the body, by the shadow it casts over its queen competition, aims for the attribution to Qatar of the organization of the World-2022.

Documented by an internal Fifa investigation, suspicion of vote buying during the vote on December 2, 2010 justified a complaint at the end of 2014 to the Swiss justice system, which has been investigating since May 2015 for "money laundering and unfair management" .

At the same time, French justice is investigating for "active and passive corruption" on a lunch held on November 23, 2010 between Nicolas Sarkozy, then head of state, two senior Qatari leaders and Michel Platini, then boss of UEFA.

Fifa's financial manna, television rights are also its main source of litigation: alongside the sanctions of its internal justice system, the legal proceedings target both the rights of the World Cups and those of regional tournaments.

Thus the "Fifagate", which starts with the spectacular arrest on May 27, 2015 of seven world football leaders in Zurich, concerns above all the "racketeering" carried out by South American football officials in exchange for the rights to continental competitions.

Investigated in the United States, the case has already resulted in the conviction of nine years in prison for Paraguayan Juan Manuel Napout and four years in prison for Brazilian José Maria Marin.

Jeffrey Webb, another leader from the Cayman Islands, has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $ 6.7 million, but is still awaiting his criminal sentence.

The fall of Blatter and Platini

Fifa has also been marred by the fall of two former leaders.

Former President Sepp Blatter has been targeted since September 2015 by an investigation for "unfair management", after the discovery of the payment made by Fifa to Michel Platini of 2 million Swiss francs (1.8 million euros) in early 2011, for an advisory work dating back to the period 1999-2002.

This case earned Blatter, like Platini, a suspension of several years from all football-related activities, which prevented the former UEFA president from running for the presidency of Fifa in 2016.

Blatter and Platini have been hammering for five years that this sum is a residual salary corresponding to an agreement between them in the spring of 1998, while the Swiss sought the support of the triple Golden Ball to take the head of Fifa.

With AFP 

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