Son of the owner of the Nantes club and deputy general manager of the Canaries, the 41-year-old manager and these two people, including an agent, are questioned in particular about transfers between 2015 and 2018.
The deputy managing director of FC Nantes, Franck Kita, as well as “two people, including a players’ agent”, were indicted Thursday, June 29, and placed under judicial control, announced in a press release the parquet floor of Rennes. The indictment concerns heads of “money laundering, aggravated money laundering, laundering of tax evasion and exercising the activity of a sports agent without a valid licence”according to the press release from prosecutor Philippe Astruc.
Also added to it “the illegal exercise of the activity of sports agent by a national of a Member State or party to the agreement on the European economic area and complicity, illegal exercise of the activity of sports agent by a national of ‘a State which is not a member of the European Union or not a party to the agreement on the European economic area and complicity’. The alleged facts relate in particular to transfers of players to FC Nantes between 2015 and 2018.
“The investigations mainly focused on the analysis of contracts, bank accounts and financial flows, with exploitation of the numerous documents seized during the search. ‘one of the protagonists’adds the prosecutor, who recalls that “one of the defendants has already been convicted of tax evasion, including a ban on managing”.
Waldemar Kita released from police custody
For his part, the owner of the club and father of Franck, Waldemar Kita, was also placed in police custody on Wednesday, like the other three people, before being released. He “will be reconvened later”, according to the press release. The French Football Federation (FFF) is a civil party, specifies the magistrate.
Initially launched by the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, which then forwarded it to the French judicial authorities, the investigation highlighted in particular the fact that “the managers of FC Nantes would have resorted on a recurring basis, at least since 2015, to the employment of unauthorized sports agents by establishing contracts for sports agents and employment contracts for players under the guise of of nominees, both in the context of player transfer negotiations and in the context of the negotiation of player employment contracts”, explains the press release. As part of this investigation, searches had previously been carried out in December 2020 at the club’s headquarters, at the Jonelière training center.
On May 10, 2022, three days after Nantes’ coronation in the Coupe de France, three club officials had already been placed in police custody for several hours as part of an investigation into player transfers.