The affair surrounding what has been called the “digital army” of PSG experienced a new twist this Friday. Indeed, according to information from our colleagues at Worldthe former communications director of Paris Saint-Germain, Jean-Martial Ribes, was indicted in Paris on December 1 for active corruption and influence peddling, complicity and concealment of misappropriation of the purpose of processing personal data, usurpation of the identity of a third party with a view to disturbing one’s peace or damaging one’s honor and online moral harassment. Just that.
“Jean-Martial Ribes contests the facts with which he is accused and specifies that all the actions he carried out during his many years of presence within PSG were always done legally, whether in the context of promotion , development or defense of the interests of the club in France and abroad,” its lawyer, Me Romain Vanni, told AFP.
According to the investigation report, Mr. Ribes is notably suspected of having asked the supporters referent at PSG and former member of intelligence, Malik Naït-Liman, to find confidential information on the supporter that Neymar had slapped in 2019, in order to discredit him. In exchange for places for matches, Malik Naït-Liman then requested a police contact to find his date of birth, his address, his criminal record. Information then disseminated by the Twitter account called “Paname Squad”. Mr. Naït-Liman and this police officer were also indicted in this case.
A case with multiple ramifications
In October 2022, Mediapart revealed that the club had commissioned a communications agency, Digital Big Brother (DBB), from 2018 to 2020, to create fake Twitter accounts to carry out hostile campaigns against targets of the club in the capital, this which the latter disputes. The long story broke in September 2022, first relating to suspicions of transmission, particularly to PSG, of confidential information on certain people from police files.
Among those accused, the Franco-Algerian lobbyist Tayeb Benabderrahmane, suspected of having for a time provided the club with confidential information obtained by police officers, and held compromising information for Qatar and for Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, the club’s boss. , which may have been used to carry out blackmail. “NAK” has since announced a defamation complaint against him. The lobbyist, who claims to have been arbitrarily detained in Qatar for six months in early 2020, for his part obtained the opening of a judicial investigation at the end of January for torture, kidnapping and sequestration.