(Paris) Two Parisian investigating judges on Tuesday ordered the referral to a criminal court of six acquaintances and friends of Paul Pogba, including his brother Mathias, after two years of investigations into the kidnapping and extortion of the French footballer in 2022, AFP learned from a source close to the case.
Five of these relatives are suspected of having organized a meeting in the Paris suburbs on March 19, 2022 to force the player to help them financially, in the name of their old friendship.
On that occasion, the former international, since suspended for four years for doping, was kidnapped and held up by two unidentified men who demanded 13 million euros ($20 million) from him.
In their order, which AFP has seen, the two judges consider that this was not, as some of the accused have been able to claim, “a simple ‘friendly’ meeting, but rather facts falling under criminal law.”
Mathias, who was absent that night and who discovered the kidnapping afterwards, is suspected of having “put pressure on his brother Paul and his family in order to ensure payment of the sum of 13 million euros”.
During the investigation, Mathias had assured that he had feared for his safety and that of his loved ones, then indicated to the judges in January that he had been manipulated by the other suspects.
Although this sum was never transferred, the judges established that Paul Pogba transferred funds and valuables to the five relatives, for a total amount estimated at nearly 250,000 euros ($375,000).
During the investigation, the accused men developed “a common position”, according to the judges, by “claiming to be victims of the acts of which Paul Pogba is a victim” while undergoing “pressure and aggression” from two armed men designated as instigators and who have never been identified.
The three childhood friends and two former acquaintances from the neighborhood where the Pogbas grew up, in Roissy-en-Brie in the Paris region, will therefore be tried mainly for extortion, kidnapping and criminal association. One of these men is in pre-trial detention.
Regarding Mathias, he will be tried for attempted extortion and criminal association.
In the interests of “good administration of justice” and with “the agreement of the civil party”, the Paris public prosecutor’s office and the investigating judges have reclassified the facts initially considered criminal as offences.
The case became public, turning into a family drama, when Mathias Pogba published videos in the summer of 2022 incriminating his younger brother whom he accused of having “abandoned” them.
In one of these videos, he also accused his brother of trying to bewitch his national team-mate Kylian Mbappé.
When contacted, the lawyers for the accused did not immediately respond.