“Le Monde” became aware of the hearing as a witness to the president of FIFA, in October 2021, by French justice, in which he affirms that he “did not know that Nicolas Sarkozy had asked Platini to support Qatar “in the controversial attribution of the football tournament.
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“We are going to organize the most beautiful cup in history.” This October 13, 2021, in Zurich (Switzerland), Gianni Infantino plastrono by evoking, before the French investigating marc Sommerer and Virginie Tilmont, the cup of world 2022 football in Qatar.
For the Italian-Swiss President of the International Football Federation (FIFA), auditioned that day as a witness by the magistrates responsible for the judicial investigation opened in 2019 by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), for “corruption “, on the controversial allocation of the emirate tournament, this first world organized in the fall will be an opportunity to see” players at the top of their physical form and not exhausted after a long season “.
In his report, which Le Monde became aware of, Mr. Infantino admits, before the French judges, that he did not expect “not at all” to what the emirate wins the election of Assignment of the World Cup organized by FIFA, December 2, 2010. “I had been impressed, on the morning of the vote, the presentation of Qatar (…). But from there to gain the right of organization of the World Cup, There is a big way to do, “concedes the one who was then the right arm, as secretary general, of Michel Platini, the president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) – The latter was pointed out Finger by Sepp Blatter, the ex-president of FIFA, who had assured, in an interview with the world in November 2021, that, “without the intervention at the last moment of Sarkozy on Platini, Qatar would never have had the World Cup “.
“For me, it was obvious that we could not play the World Cup in Qatar in June-July”, recognizes the leader, while adding that Mr. Platini, who revealed to have voted, as That member of the FIFA Executive Committee, in favor of the emirate, “said that it should take place in winter”. Even if this possibility did not appear in the specifications of FIFA during the attribution ballot.
At the beginning of the hearing, Mr. Infantino swears that he did not know facts of corruption or unfair acts in connection with the allocation of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It was on the alleged role of his former boss at UEFA that Infantino was mainly questioned by the judges. What did he know about the voting intentions of the former Blues and lunch at the Elysée, organized on November 23, 2010, in the presence of Mr. Platini, the Emir of Qatar and his Prime Minister, and Who constitutes, for the PNF, a “decisive turning point” in the campaign for the allocation of the World Cup? “Not much”, according to Mr. Infantino, adept at very short answers before the judges – he was nevertheless in command of the UEFA administration for seven years.
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