The Bobigny court considered that it was not proven that the defendants actually manufactured and put into circulation hundreds of counterfeit banknotes, as the prosecution alleged.
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The evening had turned into chaos. The Bobigny court (Seine-Saint-Denis) released, on Friday May 26, two people suspected of fraud for the manufacture and sale of 700 counterfeit tickets for the Champions League final, May 28, 2022 at the Stade de France.
A man and a woman were prosecuted for having made and sold 720 counterfeit tickets for the Liverpool-Real Madrid match at 60 euros per unit, according to the Bobigny prosecution. Their trial was held in mid-April. In its deliberations, the court considered that it had not been proven that the defendants had actually manufactured and put into circulation hundreds of counterfeit banknotes, as claimed by the prosecution. The man was acquitted and the woman convicted of forgery – a lesser qualification than that of fraud, for a single grossly forged note found in her company’s trash can. She was fined 120 day-fines at 30 euros.
UEFA and the Paris police headquarters have seen their civil action proceedings dismissed. From counterfeit tickets used on the evening of the match, the investigators went back to a printing press in Hauts-de-Seine which served “significantly” to the reproduction of titles, told AFP the prosecutor of Seine-Saint-Denis, Eric Mathais. The investigations identified an employee of the company as well as a man who provided him with the elements to make doctored titles. According to the court’s deliberations, the duo had already made fake tickets for major events.
Approximately 8,000 banknote reading “incidents”
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had initially incriminated the “English supporters” for the general disorder around the Stade de France. He had asserted that “30,000 to 40,000” supporters had presented themselves with counterfeit tickets or without a ticket.
The investigation overseen by the Bobigny prosecutor’s office reveals a phenomenon of much more modest proportions. Of the 79,000 places, the computer system recorded that evening 8,000 “incidents” ticket readings at gates, including approximately 2,500 titles already read and therefore possibly duplicated, as well as 2,500 unknown titles, according to Eric Mathais.
Since the fiasco, successive reports on this final have refuted the thesis of a massive fraud of counterfeit tickets, pointing instead to a succession of organizational and police malfunctions.
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