tried for sexual assault, the ex-president of Angers Saïd Chabane denies everything

The trial of the former president of the SCO, accused by seven women of sexual assault “committed by a person abusing the authority conferred on him by his function” began Monday in Angers.

Saïd Chabane, former president and current owner of the Angers football club (Ligue 2), denied before the city’s criminal court on Monday, December 18, the facts of which seven women accused him. He is on trial until December 19 for sexual assault “committed by a person abusing the authority conferred on him by his position”.

The first complaint was filed in January 2020 by an employee of the SCO in Angers. She denounced facts that she said occurred a few months earlier during a trip to Madrid in which several employees participated. According to the young woman, who was 25 at the time, Saïd Chabane had caressed her thigh during a taxi ride, before taking her hand and placing it on his erect penis. He then touched, according to her, her buttocks and chest during a one-on-one shopping session, to which she had not “didn’t dare say no”.

He accuses a complainant of lying

“It’s not me, it’s not me”, Saïd Chabane kept repeating at the helm. When the president asked him why, in his opinion, the complainant had filed a complaint, he replied: “I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for four years. I don’t know.” “Is (the complainant) a liar?”insisted the president. “In this context, yes”he said.

“I filed a complaint to prevent this behavior from happening to other women. I filed a complaint on my own, without any other pressure”declared the complainant, who claims to have “is giving up on (his) professional future” following his filing of a complaint. The latter specified that she now works in a sector unrelated to her studies in sports marketing.

“I was advised not to be alone with him.”

One of the plaintiffs

during the hearing on December 18, 2023

Another complainant explained that she was attacked while she was alone with Saïd Chabane in the club’s offices. According to her, the ex-leader massaged her shoulders then touched her chest while she was sitting at her post. He then embraced her while caressing her buttocks, she said in her complaint. “I never found myself alone face-to-face with her”, replied the defendant on the stand. The seven complainants were employees of the club or its charcuterie company at the time of the facts denounced, between 2014 and 2019. One of them mentioned during the hearing a “machismo atmosphere” within the club at the time.

For his part, Saïd Chabane denounced a “presumption of innocence become insignificant” and defended himself from all “domination” with its employees. Entangled in a succession of cases – he is also accused of money laundering in an organized gang and illegal exercise of player agent by the Bobigny court – and a catastrophic sporting situation, Saïd Chabane has no longer been the president of the SCO since March 2023, the latter having given way to his son Romain. But, he remains the owner of the current leader of Ligue 2.