In the investigation opened in Paris on the attribution of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, the former vice-president of Fifa, the Tahitian Reynald Temarii is indicted for ” passive private corruption “. A first indictment that could lead to others in the sprawling Qatargate case.
After seven years of investigation and the opening of a judicial investigation “ for corruption, money laundering, concealment and fraud by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) in 2019, Reynald Temarii is the first actor in this case to be investigated by the French courts. The former president of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) had been placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness in this case since November 2021.
In this judicial investigation opened in 2019 in Paris on the designation of the emirate as host country, the investigating judges seek to know if the vote in favor of Qatar, for the Mondial-2022 of football, of Michel Platini, at the time head of UEFA, was obtained in exchange for consideration. At the heart of the suspicions is a lunch held in 2010 between Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of the Republic, Michel Platini and two senior Qatari leaders.
Important member of Fifa
Tahiti is the most populated of the islands of French Polynesia, but it has its own football federation, a member of the Oceanian Confederation (OFC), of which Temarii has been president since 2004. As such, he was one of the vice -presidents of Fifa until his suspension for violation of the code of ethics on November 17, 2010 after articles from the Sunday Times. That is about two weeks before the vote of the executive committee awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar on December 2.
The OFC therefore had to appoint a replacement who would have given their vote to Australia in the first round of voting and then, in the event of failure, to the United States, Qatar’s main rivals. French justice is therefore trying to find out why he appealed his suspension on the night of November 30 to December 1, at the same time depriving his confederation of a representative during the vote.
In October 2022, Reynald Temarii gave his version of the facts at a press conference and said he was the victim of a fraud, explaining that he had received, before deciding to appeal, a confidential note from the consultant Jean-Charles Brisard informing him that the prosecution Swiss federal government planned to prosecute him for corruption, which was false. He had stated that, according to this note, a ” waiver of appeal on his part “equivalent” to an admission of guilt and would compromise his defense “. According to him, these were false elements intended to push him to appeal.
And who covered, in a hidden way, the defense costs of Reynald Temarii for an amount of 305,000 euros after inviting him all expenses paid to Malaysia between his sanction and the vote in favor of Qatar? None other than Mohamed Bin Hammam, the Qatari billionaire who presided over the Asian Confederation, suspected of being the kingpin of this gigantic file of corruption. The intermediary was the former husband of Temarii’s lawyer.
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(With AFP)