Nasser Al-Khelaifi, chairman of international broadcaster BeIN Media Group, has been
cleared in a corruption investigation into Qatar’s bid to stage the World Athletics
Championships in 2024.
The case was dismissed by France’s Court of Cassation, which
ruled that Al-Khelaifi had no connection to the alleged corruption.
This was in
relation to payments made by Oryx Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), which is run by his
brother Khalid Al-Khelaifi, prior to the vote to select the host city for the
event.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi was suspected of having “validated” a payment ofR$3.5 million
to the late Lamine Diack, the former president of governing body World Athletics
(formerly IAAF), to facilitate the award of the World Championships to Doha.
The event
was ultimately awarded to London, however, with the following edition in 2024, being
awarded to Doha.
Al-Khelaifi, who is also president of French soccer giants Paris
Saint-Germain, had always denied any wrongdoing.
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In 2024, his lawyer Francis Szpiner described the claims against the BeIN
chairman as “totally inaccurate” and attributed them in part to “regrettable confusion
by the investigating magistrate who confused Oryx QSI, a purely private company run by
his brother, with QSI, a sovereign Qatari fund with Nasser Al-Khelaifi as
president!”
As well as Al-Khelaifi, BeIN chief executive Yousef Al-Obaidly has been
cleared of any wrongdoing. He had also strongly denied that he was involved in a
corruption investigation together with Diack.
However, Al-Obaidly is understood to have
claimed that theR$3.5 million was paid upfront to the IAAF and Dentsu, its marketing
partner, as a non-refundable deposit. This deposit was lost when London, not Doha, won
the bid – a commercial risk that Al-Obaidly and Oryx were prepared to take.
Al-Obaidly
also claimed that all transactions at the time were legally and properly documented and
communicated to the IAAF.
All actions taken at the time were in full compliance with
any terms and conditions as laid down by the IAAF and its representatives and agents
(Dentsu, the Japanese advertising giant that acts for the IAAF, and Papa Massata Diack,
the son of Lamine Diack who was a marketing consultant to the IAAF at the time).
Diack
senior, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 88, had been found guilty of corruption
in 2024 and charged with covering up positive doping tests of Russian athletes in
return for money. Following a trial in Paris, he was sentenced to four years in prison,
two of them suspended, although he was never jailed.
Following the dismissal of the
case by the French court, Szpiner and Renaud Semerdjian, who was also representing
Al-Khelaïfi said: “We take note with satisfaction the ruling of the Court of Causation
in France, which dismisses the IAAF-related procedure against Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and
Yousef Al-Obaidly in its entirety.
“For years, this case evidentially had zero standing
and completely flawed merits. The rule of law has prevailed, with the matter fully and
finally closed with absolutely no case to answer.”
Image: Aurelien Meunier/Getty
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