The former president of the Angers SCO football club in police custody for “organized money laundering”

The former president of the football club Angers SCO (L1) Saïd Chabane was placed in police custody on Tuesday April 4 as part of an investigation for “laundering in an organized gang”, learned Agence France-Presse with his lawyer, Mr.^e Bernard Benaiem, confirming information from TF1-LCI.

The preliminary investigation opened since June 2022 at the Bobigny prosecutor’s office also targets facts of “illegal exercise of the profession of sports agent” and has been entrusted to the central racing and gaming department.

“I ask all the media to make the difference between the natural person, in this case Saïd Chabane, who is calm and intends to respond to the investigators with complete clarity and, on the other hand, the legal person, Angers SCO, who , to my knowledge, is not involved in this case.said Teddy Kefalas, deputy president of the club.

The manager and owner of the club more than 99%, who had held this position since 2011, had resigned March 29, and had been succeeded by his son, Romain. Teddy Kefalas had been appointed Deputy Chairman and will have at his “takes charge of the operational aspects”.

malfeasance

Sporting Club de l’Ouest (SCO) has been going through a crisis for almost a year. In June, a first search took place at the club and in that of Saint-Etienne, as part of the investigation carried out in Bobigny. Of the three players’ agents placed in police custody, only one had the license allowing him to practice this profession.

Then in January, the SCO had once again been raided. The club then ensured that they had nothing to be ashamed of.

According to the club, this is a preliminary investigation ” large scope “ launched following embezzlement revealed by wiretapping carried out as part of the investigation into the extortion denounced by Paul Pogba. Separate from the Pogba affair, it concerns around fifty people and affects several clubs, assured the SCO.

The searches aimed to verify whether the commissions linked to certain transfers corresponded to real services, “bill after bill, player after player”had explained in January to the press M^e Pierry Fumanal, SCO lawyer.

Prosecutions for aggravated sexual assault

In mid-March, he was also shaken by sexist comments that cost coach Abdel Bouhazama his job. The latter having been appointed barely a few months earlier to replace Gérald Baticle, dismissed on November 22.

A case that was added to the lawsuits initiated at the beginning of 2020 against the now ex-president, for aggravated sexual assault. Despite his denials, six women who were his employees at the time of the facts denounced, including four at the SCO, have filed a complaint against him and a trial is looming.

The dismissal of sports director Olivier Pickeu in the spring of 2020 and other collaborators, which earned the club a subscription to the prud’hommes, then the separation with the emblematic coach Stéphane Moulin, the following year, precipitated the inexorable fall of Angers.

Due to serious financial difficulties, the training had also been forced to sell, last summer, a good part of its workforce. This winter, the SCO, already without illusions about its future in L1, has also resolved to let slip two of Morocco’s heroes at the 2022 World Cup, Sofiane Boufal (Al-Rayyan) and Azzedine Ounahi (Marseille), history of earn some cash.

At the beginning of March, the ultras of the kop de la Butte 1992 had estimated in a press release that Saïd Chabane “locked himself into his role as authoritarian president, firing staff who disagreed with his methods and placing characters as unbearable as they were incompetent in key positions, provided they were blindly loyal to him”.