Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, December 13, 2023. MARTIN MEISSNER / AP
For more than ten years, he was the liege man, the shadow of the Qatari president of Paris Saint-Germain, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, known as “NAK”. Keeper of all his secrets, the former Moroccan butler of the leader of PSG, Hicham Karmoussi, is today one of the central protagonists in the legal proceedings which, like Russian dolls, are piling up in France around NAK.
According to information from Mondeconfirmed by the Paris prosecutor’s office, a preliminary investigation likely to worry Mr. Al-Khelaïfi was opened, in September 2023, for “possible offenses of hidden work, and exploitation of vulnerable people”. The investigations were entrusted to the police station of the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
This investigation arises from a complaint against X filed, in March 2023, by Mr. Karmoussi for “acts of hidden work, employment of foreigners without a work permit, moral harassment, psychological violence, threats and working conditions contrary to human dignity”. This complaint was transmitted to the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office – whose economic and financial division had carried out investigations on this subject – before being referred to that of Paris for reasons of jurisdiction.
In the coming months, the Paris prosecutor’s investigation could be entrusted to an investigating judge, as part of a judicial investigation. Antoine Ory, Mr. Karmoussi’s lawyer, states in fact Monde that his client has become a civil party for these same alleged facts. Information that the prosecution does not confirm at this stage.
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Tennis, a passion shared with “NAK”
A former professional tennis player, a passion shared with NAK, also a good level player, Mr. Karmoussi criticizes his ex-employer in particular for not having made him sign any employment contract from 2011 to December 2018, “or more precisely (…) a completely fictitious contract with an organization called “Smash Academy”, which would be supposed to pay for a job, which he had no longer held since 2008, as a tennis coach”.
Sentenced to death in May 2023 by the Qatar Criminal Court in absentia for alleged crimes of espionage to the detriment of the emirate – he is accused by the Doha authorities of having attempted to monetize in the United Arab Emirates data belonging to NAK – Mr. Karmoussi accuses his former boss of having ordered him, on two occasions, to conceal and destroy “possible evidence of offenses” (phones, computers, USB keys, iPads, documents), to remove them from French justice.
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