Qatar, Paris Saint-Germain and an illegal financing scandal

Special to al-Bawaba
It was at the Elysee Palace one night in November 2010, when Michell Platini convinced the then-crown prince of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad to buy the French professional football club Paris Saint-Germain.
Bin Hamad was invited to dinner at the palace by then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Platini, who became the head of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) later, took the chance to convince the Qatari prince of the deal, according to the French investigative site Mediapart.
Platini, in return, pledged to back Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup 2022. Prince Tamim, the site said, hoped the purchase of the French club would give his small country an international leverage. This was why Qatar had formulated a plan for Paris Saint-Germain to become one of the top five in the world, the site said.
Fair financial competition
The French club started its struggle to reach the top of the European Champions League. Nonetheless, the UEFA laid out new rules for spending by clubs in the competition. It said spending by these clubs should in no way exceed their profits or revenues.
The new rules aimed to rein in fierce competition by the European clubs in buying football players. Some of the clubs spent huge amounts of money on buying these players.
The fear inside the union was that the same competition would cause some clubs to go bankrupt, while other clubs that have money would keep moving ahead on the road to the top. The union said clubs that fail to abide by the new financial regulations would be kept out of the European Champions League.
Qatar, however, allocated a budget of 1.3 billion Euros for Paris Saint-Germain over five years.
Qatar Tourism Authority
In order to have an open budget, Paris Saint-Germain ought to have unlimited profits or revenues. The French club managed to achieve this by hammering out a promotional deal with the Qatar Tourism Authority. In the light of the deal, Paris Saint-Germain would promote Qatar around the world, in return for an annual sum of money of 215 million Euros.
This contract, which was signed in 2012, had, however, caused officials at the UEFA to be doubtful. The highest contract to be signed by a European club to that date was in return for the annual sum of 30 million Euros.
The union enlisted services from a specialized office and an inquiry into the contract had shown that Paris Saint-Germain had offered promotional services to Qatar worth 2.8 million Euros every year only.
This led the UEFA to conclude that the contract the Qatar Tourism Authority signed with Paris Saint-Germain had purposes other than promoting Qatar. The union also considered the contract to be a twisted way for Qatar to get around its regulations for club financing.
Paris Saint-Germain used the huge funding it received from Qatar in bankrolling the purchase of a large number of players, including Brazilian forward Neymar. The French club bought the Brazilian forward for a staggering 402 million Euros. But this deal angered the other clubs and obliged the UEFA to open a new inquiry in September 2017.
Secret deals
The strange thing still is that the UEFA did not act to commit football clubs to respect its financial regulations. The union only signed a secret deal with Paris Saint-Germain at the end of 2017, in which it committed the French club to reduce spending on the purchase of players. This reflected on Paris Saint-Germain’s performance in 2018.
The failure of the union to force the French club to respect its own regulations raised many question marks. Union officials say they do not want to start a conflict with Qatar which has huge financial capabilities. They add that kicking Paris Saint-Germain out of the European competition would negatively affect the standards of the competition. Worse still, the same officials add, keeping the club out of the competition would reflect negatively on the profits all parts involved in it would make.