Michel Platini, the banned former Uefa president and France football legend, has been detained in connection with a criminal investigation into alleged corruption relating to Fifa’s decision to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, French justice sources have confirmed. Platini’s detention was first reported by the news website Mediapart on Tuesday morning, with Claude Guéant, the former secretary general of the Élysée Palace under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, also being interviewed as a “free suspect”.



Another adviser to Sarkozy during his presidency, Sophie Dion, was also detained for questioning.

A Sarkozy lunch, PSG and beIN sports: questions for Platini over Qatar 2022 Read more

The detention of Platini, who voted for Qatar to host the tournament, represents the first substantial public move in an investigation into the 2022 decision opened two years ago by France’s Parquet National Financier, which is responsible for law enforcement against serious financial crime. According to the judicial sources, the PNF is investigating possible “private corruption”, “criminal conspiracy” and “influence peddling and trading in influence” over the December 2010 vote, which are categories of corruption in French law.



Platini’s representatives issued a statement stressing he had not been arrested – which was confirmed by the judicial authorities’ source – and that the detention was for a “technical” reason to maintain the confidentiality of the interview. The statement said Platini had also been questioned about Uefa’s award, by a single vote, of the 2016 European Championship to France. Platini was said to be “absolutely confident” that he had done nothing wrong and “had nothing to reproach himself for”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A general view shows the judiciary police offices in Nanterre, where Michel Platini is detained. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

A main focus for the investigation is reported in French media to be the lunch Platini has acknowledged publicly he had with Sarkozy and Tamim al-Thani, the current Emir of Qatar, on 23 November 2010, less than a fortnight before the Fifa vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts. At the time, France was seeking strong economic links with mega-wealthy Qatar, and Paris Saint-Germain, the club Sarkozy supports, were in decline and financial difficulties.

Platini has said he understood Sarkozy wanted him to wield his Uefa vote for Qatar but denied that he was influenced. In an interview with the Guardian in 2013, Platini said of that lunch: “I knew Sarkozy wanted the people from Qatar to buy PSG. I understood that Sarkozy supported the candidature of Qatar. But he never asked me, or to vote for Russia [for 2018]. He knows my personality. I always vote for what is good for football. Not for myself, not for France.”

Quick guide 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar Show Hide The 2022 Fifa World Cup will take place 21 November-18 December 2022. It is the 22nd time the tournament has been staged, and the first time that the football World Cup has been held outside its traditional slot of June and July. Qatar is the smallest nation ever to host the World Cup. The tournament will feature 32 teams. Qatar qualify automatically as hosts, and will be playing in their debut World Cup finals. Qualification for the tournament concludes in March 2022, and the draw is due to take place in April 2022. While the match schedule is yet to be confirmed, the World Cup is expected to take place in eight stadiums in five cities: Doha, Lusail, Al Khor, Al Rayyan and Al Wakrah. Awarding the tournament to Qatar has been mired in controversy. Qatar’s bid won despite the country’s climate being too hot to host the tournament at the time specified in the bidding manual. Of the 22 people who voted in awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in December 2010, several including Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner, Ricardo Teixeira, Chuck Blazer, Rafael Salguero and Michel Platini have either been banned from football or indicted on corruption charges. Additionally there have been concerns over human rights abuses of construction workers building the new stadiums needed for the bid, and campaigners have criticised hosting the World Cup in a country where LGBT relationships are banned.

The then Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, has said Platini told him he had changed his vote from the USA to Qatar after the lunch, and that a decisive three further European Fifa executive committee members changed their vote to Qatar. Platini did say in 2015, when he was a candidate to replace Blatter as president, that he “might have told” US football delegates previously that he would vote for their bid but he has denied changing his mind because of the lunch.

A fortnight ago in Paris before the Fifa congress, Platini told the Guardian that he had made his mind up to vote for Qatar before the lunch. His son, Laurent, in 2012 joined the Qatar sportswear company Burrda, owned by Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), as the chief executive, which Platini has always denied had anything to do with his vote, or represented a conflict of interest.

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After Qatar’s shock victory in the Fifa vote, QSI did buy PSG in 2011, and the Qatar sovereign fund has since funded the club to a massive degree, enabling them to sign Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and other stars, and become a European football power. National links between the two countries were also strengthened; in 2011 Qatar Airways bought 50 A320 neo-family planes made by Airbus at its factory in Toulouse, an order reaffirmed in December 2017. Guéant and Dion are reported to have been at the November 2010 lunch, as Sarkozy advisers. In 2015, Sarkozy responded to questions about the Elysee palace lunch by scoffing that it was an exaggeration of his power to suggest he could influence Platini.

Platini and Blatter were banned from football activities after Platini was paid 2m CHF by Fifa in 2011; both men claimed it was in payment for Platini’s work as a Fifa football adviser, which he had finished nine years earlier in 2002. Platini continues to protest his innocence of any wrongdoing in relation to that payment, and has mounted a series of legal appeals against his ban, which is due to expire in October.