Court referrals bring the Qatar Gate scandal back into the spotlight
The French prosecutor’s request to put four people on trial is moving the case from corruption suspicions to a judicial test that could shed light on the mysteries and obscure details surrounding Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Nearly sixteen years after the vote that awarded Qatar the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, one branch of the French investigation into the circumstances surrounding that decision is drawing closer to the courtroom. France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office has requested that four individuals be referred to the Paris Criminal Court, a move that could lead to the first trial in the case known as “Qatar Gate.”
The newspaper Le Monde reported that the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office issued its final submissions on August 27, after completing “the analysis it had conducted,” and requested the referral of four individuals involved in what investigators have called the “Polynesian strand” of the case. They are Reynald Temarii, former vice-president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and former president of the Oceania Football Confederation; Qatari billionaire Mohamed Bin Hammam; consultant Jean-Charles Brisard; and Géraldine Lizier, Temarii’s former lawyer and Brisard’s former wife.
The case is significant because prosecutors do not view the facts merely as financial dealings between sports officials. Instead, they suspect an attempt to influence one of the votes determining the host of the 2022 World Cup. According to the French investigation, Bin Hammam allegedly sought to “neutralize a vote” that could have benefited Qatar’s rivals by covering the legal defence costs of Temarii, who had been suspended by FIFA’s Ethics Committee in November 2010.
This point is particularly important because Temarii had lost his voting rights. Had he not appealed his sanction, a new representative of the Oceania Football Confederation could have been appointed for the vote scheduled at the time for December 2, 2010. Prosecutors suspect that encouraging Temarii to appeal helped prevent the appointment of a new representative who might have voted against Qatar, thereby leaving the seat vacant during the vote. Prosecutors link this move to Bin Hammam’s intervention and are seeking his trial on charges of “active corruption.”
At the heart of the case is a sum of €305,440, which French investigators say represented Temarii’s legal defence costs. The money was allegedly paid in what the courts described as a “secret” manner, through two companies, one Qatari and one Lebanese, in two instalments made in February and April 2011 to the Swiss account of JCB Consulting International, a company belonging to Brisard. According to the investigation, Brisard received €50,000 for his role as an intermediary, while Lizier said she was paid €135,000 in legal fees in connection with the case.
Investigators attach particular importance to a confidential memorandum Brisard sent to Temarii on November 30, 2010, just days before the vote. According to Le Monde, the memorandum warned that abandoning an appeal against the FIFA sanction in advance could be interpreted as an admission of guilt in a purported Swiss judicial proceeding.
However, the Swiss investigator whom Brisard was said to have cited later denied before the French courts that he had contacted her about the matter. As a result, the content of the memorandum and the source of the information it contained became a major point of dispute in the investigation.
During the investigation, Temarii acknowledged receiving a valuable watch during a meeting in Doha with the former Emir of Qatar, the late Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, in February 2010. He said he subsequently disposed of it by throwing it into a lake in Tahiti, but denied any connection between the gift and his vote on the World Cup hosting decision. He insisted that, had he taken part in the ballot, he would not have voted in favour of Qatar.
Bin Hammam, meanwhile, who resides in Qatar, has failed to respond to summonses from the French judiciary or correspondence from the judges. He has been wanted under an international arrest warrant since June 2023.
The prosecutor’s request seeks to prosecute Brisard and Lizier for “fraud” and “concealment of the proceeds of corruption.” The defence strongly disputes this argument. Lizier’s lawyer maintains that his client’s work as a lawyer and the advice she provided to Temarii regarding his right to appeal cannot be transformed into evidence of fraud or complicity in corruption. The defence also questions whether the absence of the Oceania representative could actually have influenced the outcome of the vote, arguing that the suspension of voting rights was based on an unwritten rule and that its actual impact on the ballot’s outcome has not been established.
The significance of this latest development lies in the fact that it does not close the “Qatar Gate” case but instead opens a new judicial phase. The prosecutor’s request concerns only the Polynesian strand, while the other part of the investigation, linked to Qatar Sports Investments’ purchase of Paris Saint-Germain in 2011 and the alleged roles played by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former UEFA President Michel Platini, remains under investigation. In April 2025, the investigating judge announced the partial conclusion of the investigation into the Polynesian strand, before prosecutors submitted their final request in August 2026.
The current development therefore represents an important transition from the evidence-gathering and investigative stage to the stage in which the evidence will be tested before the courts. It does not, however, amount to a conviction. The final decision on whether the four individuals will be referred to trial now rests with the investigating judges, who must issue an order committing them for trial.
If that happens, the forthcoming trial will be the first public judicial examination of part of the facts that have, for years, been at the centre of questions surrounding the way the 2010 vote was decided in Qatar’s favour. The lawyer for Anticor, the civil-party anti-corruption association involved in the case, described the development as “an important step forward” in a complex and long-running case.
