Relaxation for two people suspected of fraud, a man and a womanfor the manufacture and sale of 700 counterfeit tickets for the 2022 Champions League final in Stade de France. The Bobigny court rendered its decision on Friday. They were prosecuted for having made and sold match tickets at 60 euros each Liverpool-Real Madrid.
3600 euro fine
In its deliberations, the court considered that it had not been proven that the defendants had actually manufactured and put into circulation hundreds of counterfeit banknotes, as claimed by the prosecution. The man was acquitted and the woman convicted of forgery, a lesser qualification than that of fraud, for a single grossly forged ticket discovered in the trash of his company. She received a 120-day fine of 30 euros (in other words, she must pay a fine of 3600 euros in 120 days).
From counterfeit tickets used on the evening of the match, the specialized investigators went back to a Hauts-de-Seine printing press which was used “significantly” for the reproduction of the titles, told AFP the prosecutor of Seine-Saint-Denis Eric Mathais. The investigations identified an employee of the company as well as a man who provided him with the elements to make doctored titles. According to the deliberations of the court, which was not seized of these facts, the duo had already made counterfeit tickets for major events, such as trade fairs.
UEFA and the Paris Police Prefecture have seen their civil action proceedings dismissed. This judgment is the only one to have intervened in the counterfeit part of this tumultuous evening, which tarnished the image of France internationally. If the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin initially incriminated “English supporters” for the general disorder around the Stade de France, claiming that “30,000 to 40,000” showed up with counterfeit tickets or without tickets, the investigation headed by the Bobigny prosecution reveals a phenomenon of proportions much more modest.
Of the 79,000 seats, the computer system noted that evening 8,000 “incidents” of ticket readings at the gates, including around 2,500 titles already read, and therefore possibly duplicated – as well as 2,500 unknown titles, detailed to AFP Eric Mathais. “We can say that there was fraud for at least 5,000 tickets,” he said. Since the Saint-Denis fiasco, successive reports on this final have refuted the thesis of a mive counterfeit money fraud and rather pointed to a succession of organizational and police dysfunctions.