After two years of investigations into the kidnapping and extortion of Paul Pogba, a trial is looming. Two Parisian investigating judges ordered on Tuesday 10 September that six acquaintances and relatives of the footballer, including his brother Mathias, be brought before the criminal courts, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned from a source close to the case.
Five of his relatives are suspected of organising a meeting in the Paris suburbs on 19 March 2022 to force the player to help them financially, in the name of their former friendship. On this occasion, the former international, suspended for four years for doping, was kidnapped and assaulted by two men who demanded 13 million euros from him.
In their ruling, which AFP had knowledge of, the two judges consider that “It was not, as some of the accused were able to maintain, a simple “friendly” meeting, but rather acts classified under criminal law”.
Mathias, absent that night and who discovered the kidnapping afterwards, is suspected of having exercised “He put pressure on his brother Paul and his family to guarantee payment of the sum of 13 million euros”During the investigation, Mathias said he feared for his safety and that of his loved ones, and in January he told judges that he had been manipulated by the other suspects.
Although this sum was never transferred, the judges established that Paul Pogba had transferred funds and securities to the five relatives, for a total amount estimated at around 250,000 euros.
Two gunmen never identified
During the investigation, the defendants developed “a common position”According to the judges, in “claiming to be victims of the acts of which Paul Pogba is a victim” while submitting “pressure and aggression” of the two gunmen identified as sponsors who have never been identified.
The three childhood friends and two old acquaintances from the neighbourhood where Pogba grew up in Roissy-en-Brie (Seine-et-Marne) will be tried mainly for extortion, kidnapping and criminal association. One of these men is in pre-trial detention. As for Mathias, he will be tried for attempted extortion and criminal association.
For the sake of “good administration of justice”and with “the agreement of the civil party”The Paris prosecutor’s office and the investigating judges reclassified the acts initially considered criminal as misdemeanors.
The affair became public and became a family drama when Mathias Pogba published videos in the summer of 2022 incriminating his younger brother, whom he accused of having them. “abandoned”In one of these videos, he also accused his brother of trying to harass his teammate Kylian Mbappé. When contacted, the lawyers of the accused did not immediately react.
