Has the shady business sky surrounding Paris Saint-Germain just been pierced by a slight thinning? Confirming information from Le Monde, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced to AFP that it had, in August, dismissed “for lack of a sufficiently serious offense” its investigation opened at the end of 2018 for suspicions of ethnic registration at PSG between 2013 and 2018.
In November 2018, as part of the “Football Leaks”, a European media collective indicated that the PSG recruitment unit had mentioned ethnic criteria during this period in its evaluation sheets for young players: “French”, ” North African”, “Caribbean”, “African”. The preliminary investigation was opened in particular for discrimination based on origin, ethnicity or nationality.
After these revelations, the club was fined 100,000 euros by the Disciplinary Committee of the Professional Football League (LFP) in January 2019. Several club officials (Pierre Reynaud, Marc Westerloppe and Bertrand Reuzeau) were also seen imposing suspended fines.
The PSG had defended itself by explaining that the registration had been the result of a “personal initiative of the manager” of the “recruitment unit of the training center, dedicated to territories outside Île-de-France”, directed to the era by Marc Westerloppe, who left at the start of 2018 for Stade Rennes. In the wake of the revelations, PSG had launched an internal investigation, the conclusions of which were presented to the Ministry of Sports. The club had concluded that there had been “no proven case of discrimination”, despite the existence of an ethnic file, and announced “measures aimed at strengthening ethical practices” within it.