Qatar Sports Investments is considering reducing its stake in Paris Saint-Germain amid a row surrounding the indictment in France of the club’s president, Nasser al-Khelaifi.
The Ligue 1 club’s backers are open to further diluting their investment, which amounts to 87.5%, after Qatar reacted with anger to the latest proceedings involving Khelaifi. The 51-year-old was placed under formal investigation last Wednesday, in relation to a case surrounding a Paris-based media company, for alleged complicity in vote buying, interference with the freedom to vote and complicity in abuse of power, as part of a wider case involving the businessman Arnaud Lagardère. Khelaifi denies wrongdoing.
QSI sold a 12.5% stake in PSG to Arctos Sports Partners, an American investment group, in December 2023. That deal was framed as a means of bolstering the club’s ability to compete at European level and the Guardian understands QSI would entertain lessening its involvement as part of a wider move to focus on projects outside France.
Khelaifi, whose other roles include the influential position of European Club Association chairman, has been charged in connection with a complex case involving Lagardère Group, which had longstanding business interests in sport. It surrounds an internal power struggle in 2018 between the wealthy board members Vincent Bolloré and Bernard Arnault. The latter was a supporter of Arnaud Lagardère. The PSG chairman’s proximity owed to his role on the board of Qatar Investment Authority, whose subsidiary Qatar Holding LLC was the main shareholder of Lagardère Group.
QIA had originally sided with resolutions tabled by Bolloré’s Amber Capital investment fund in the dispute. It is claimed that, five days after the Lagardère Group board held its first vote on the matter, QIA switched position and voted for governance resolutions put forward by Lagardère. He and his allies are alleged to have called contacts, including Khelaifi, before that change of heart.
The charges come two and a half years after Khelaifi was cleared of corruption in a case regarding World Cup media rights. He was also cleared in February 2023 after a corruption investigation into Qatar’s bid for the 2017 World Athletics Championships.
Part of a QIA statement in reaction to the Lagardère case read: “Mr al-Khelaifi had no substantive role in this matter nor made any decisions in this regard. Day-to-day matters involving companies into which QIA has made an investment are handled by its executives, not by members of QIA’s board such as Nasser al-Khelaifi … Accordingly [al-Khelaifi] was not in any position to influence, or to take any action on behalf of, QIA involving the company Lagardère.”
Qatar’s power brokers are understood to be frustrated by what they view as a lack of support in France, where the country’s scale of investment has been significant. Any reduction of interest in PSG would present French football with a fresh element of uncertainty at a time when the domestic league has launched legal action against DAZN, the broadcaster, for withholding half of its latest payment for television rights.
