A new episode in the soap opera of suspected corruption in the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. It features a French and a Qatari actor. According to Le Monde, a complaint has been filed against the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the former Qatari prime minister, Ben Jassem al-Thani, by the anti-corruption association Anticor. Filed on 7 April, it also targets Nicolas Sarkozy’s former right-hand man, Claude Guéant, and advertising executive François de La Brosse. The four men are accused by Anticor of influence peddling, bribery of a foreign public official, criminal association, illegal financing of an electoral campaign and receiving stolen goods. Anticor is basing its case on an article from the Mediapart website, published last September, in which it is revealed that François de La Brosse collaborated free of charge, via his company ZNZ Group, in the presidential campaign won by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, and then as a communications advisor at the Elysée Palace. In 2011, as ZNZ was facing financial difficulties, François de La Brosse approached the former head of state, then Claude Guéant. ZNZ and a Qatari company, Q.Media – owned by Ben Jassem al-Thani’s son-in-law – then signed a memorandum of understanding for the creation of an Internet television channel, “Enjoy Qatar“, in exchange for the payment of 600,000 euros. “Are we dealing here with an offer of a corrupt pact that would have been made with the sole objective of thanking François de La Brosse for his services, or are we dealing with the partial realisation of a wider corrupt pact that would have been concluded previously between Nicolas Sarkozy and Qatar?“, asks the Anticor association in its complaint, consulted by AFP. According to its lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Soufron, “it was important for Anticor to take up this case because of its potential links with the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar on the one hand, but also because of the potential influence peddling and acts of corruption that would have been committed directly in connection with a presidential campaign.“
