Placed in police custody in Nice this Friday morning, Christophe Galtier “was referred to the prosecution for his summons to the Nice Criminal Court on December 15, 2023”, announces the public prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme. The current PSG coach will be well judged for “moral harassment” and “discrimination on the grounds of belonging or not belonging, real or supposed, to an ethnic group, a nation, an alleged race or a determined religion” for the comments he would have made while training OGC Nice, during the 2021-2022 season, said the magistrate in a press release.
His adopted son, John Valovic-Galtier, player’s agent and presented as the agent of Christophe Galtier, also summoned as part of the investigation opened since April on suspicion of “discrimination based on an alleged race or belonging to a religion”, was left free.
He “challenged the offenses which were likely to be attributed to him”
The affair broke out with the publication of a message attributed to the former director of OGC Nice Julien Fournier, sent to the sports director of Ineos, the group that owns the club and denouncing racist and Islamophobic statements about of part of the Côte d’Azur workforce. He would explain in particular that Christophe Galtier would have asked him to “take into account the reality of the city of Nice and that we could not have so many blacks and Muslims in the team”. Julien Fournier had not denied the content of these remarks. During his hearing this Friday, Christophe Galtier “challenged the offenses which were likely to be attributed to him”.
“I am deeply shocked by the words that I am given, relayed by some in an irresponsible way”, had already reacted the coach in a press conference after the outbreak of the affair.