In a mysterious case, between a member of the pressure group allegedly arbitrarily detained in Qatar for nine months in 2020, and Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaifi, president of the French Paris Saint-Germain Club, the former, a Franco-Algerian, is accused of blackmailing Al-Khelaifi and the latter accepting his release after he was given an implicated “flash memory”.
On the front page, the French newspaper Liberation, on September 29, headlined “Extortion, services and data transfer keys”, sparking a heated story between two camps that have become victims.
Six weeks before a controversial World Cup in gas-rich Qatar, the case has so far raised several unanswered questions.
In two complaints filed in Paris last August for the appointment of an investigating judge, of which the AFP was aware, the Franco-Algerian entrepreneur Tayeb Ben Abdel Rahman, who has many complex relationships, tells of his closeness to the Qatari authorities, Al-Khelaifi and a close associate of the latter.
According to three sources close to the file, the businessman has started a dispute with Al-Khelaifi after possessing personal videos of the latter, and elements that could ignite the debate on granting Qatar the right to host the World Cup. FIFA 2022, which is the subject of a criminal investigation in Paris.
arbitrary arrest
These objects were in the hands of Tayeb bin Abdul Rahman, who moved to Qatar in 2019. What did he do next? Did he try to profit and blackmail Nasser Al-Khelaifi?
At a press conference in Paris on Wednesday, his lawyers discussed the arrest “for no reason or reason” at his Qatari home on January 13, 2020, followed by an “arbitrary arrest” interspersed with “torture”, according to lawyer Luc. Vidal.
According to complaints in France that have not yet led to the opening of a judicial investigation, Tayeb bin Abdul Rahman waited “about a month” to meet a Qatari judge, “who informed him that he was suspected of having” an intelligence struggling with a foreign power ».
According to a French medical certificate issued in January 2021 that AFP was aware of, Mr. Ben Abdelrahman “shows all the signs of post-traumatic stress and the consequences are clear and certain” between what he reported and his condition. health.
In the opposition camp, torture charges are denied “Mr. Abd al-Rahman was arrested in a villa with his phone and allowed to meet with his lawyer.”
The source of the arrest justifies that the businessman “had irrelevant information that he tried to sell to the United Arab Emirates”, close to Qatar, “which she did not want”.
During his detention in July 2020, Tayeb bin Abdel-Rahman in Nasser Al-Khelaifi signed a “joint memorandum” seen by the AFP, admitting “illegal possession of confidential documents to have altered or falsified their contents”.
Therefore, Abdel Rahman remained silent and promised to pay 5 million euros in case he violated this promise. Give the other party three data transfer keys and one external hard drive in question.
Al-Khelaifi’s close associate also signed a protocol that the AFP was aware of. His lawyer, Antoine Ory, declined to comment.
At the end of October 2020, Ben Abdel Rahman was released and returned to France. He does all he can to compensate for the alleged damage caused to him and revoke the protocol that he deems devoid of legal value.
In a double complaint last August, his lawyers are stepping up their response, targeting not only alleged detention conditions in Qatar, but the role of lawyers who worked to sign Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s memorandum.
suffocation
Ben Abdel Rahman’s lawyers also initiated proceedings in the Bar Council against their client’s original defense team, “which could have alerted (the French authorities) to his detention” in Qatar, but “put him in jail. a state of suffocation “, according to one of the lawyers, Juan Branco.
Ben Abd al-Rahman’s defense also points to “silence” or even to the “collusion” of the French authorities with Qatar. Considering this a “state scandal”, according to Branko.
Evidence of this, he says, is that police arrested their client with two former policemen on September 26, then accused them in Paris of “forgery and use of forgeries” or “collusion and concealment of breach of professional secrecy.” “.
The July 2021 investigation, according to several sources, addresses suspicions of extortion of Al-Khelaifi with private videos. His lawyers consider “unacceptable pressure to force him to stop the proceedings against Qatar”.
Faced with the gravity of these accusations, several sources close to the file have been cautious about the credibility of bin Abdul Rahman’s statements.
A Qatari official contacted by Agence France-Presse, without further clarification, indicated that “a criminal investigation is underway in Qatar, targeted and awaited by the courts of Qatar”.
In response to a question from Agence France-Presse, Al-Khulaifi declined to comment on the case and a source indicated that the president of the Paris Saint-Germain Club was not the subject of “any investigation or accusation” in this file. considered a “complete fraud, an insult to French law”.
