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Jérôme Valcke, former Secretary General of FIFA: “We said to ourselves, ‘Qatar has so much money, let’s take advantage of it'”

Jérôme Valcke, former French Secretary General (2007-2015) of the International Football Federation (FIFA), assures us: he was one of the main “spectators” of the controversial awarding, on December 2, 2010, of the 2022 FIFA World Cup to Qatar. The candidacy of the emirate had been preferred (14 votes against 8) to that of the United States. “Without voting rights”, the 61-year-old former leader assures, in an interview with Worldthat he was opposed to victory at the polls in Qatar.

Suspended by FIFA in 2015, prosecuted in Switzerland for “suspicions of multiple unfair management” in another case, Mr. Valcke was acquitted, in October 2020 and June 2022, of the counts of “aggravated unfair management” by the Federal Criminal Court Swiss on the part of the “villa in Sardinia” which he benefited from thanks to the boss of Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) and BeIN Media, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi. In 2020, FIFA withdrew its corruption complaint against the two men. Mr. Valcke was also sentenced on appeal to an eleven-month suspended prison sentence for “repeated passive corruption” and “repeated forgery in titles” as part of a separate case, and could appeal.

In January, the ex-number two of FIFA was also heard as a witness by French justice in the context of the judicial investigation opened, in 2019, by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office on the controversial attribution of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. .

Do you understand the criticisms of public opinion on human rights in Qatar, on the environmental impact of the competition and on the questions of corruption concerning the attribution of the World Cup to this country?

In my opinion, the public opinion of such a country will be interested in this tournament as its national team will win. Qatar will then no longer be criticized on the principle of the organization. Public opinion is not interested in the allocation process, twelve years later, in air-conditioned stadiums in the midst of global warming, etc. All of this will fade into the background. I’m sure that once the trophy is lifted on December 18, everyone will have forgotten.

Read also: You have never missed a World Cup, but for the first time, the World Cup in Qatar makes you hesitate? Testify

Do you regret having awarded the 2018 Worlds to Russia and 2022 to Qatar at the same time?

I wanted the awarding of these two Worlds to be simultaneous. Europeans were interested in the 2018 edition, and 2022 interested the rest of the world. In 2008, in the midst of the economic crisis, the renewal of contracts worried me. The challenge was to try to obtain amounts equivalent to the previous ones for sponsorship and TV rights contracts.

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