Yesterday, six individuals connected to France midfielder Paul Pogba—including one of his brothers—went on trial in Paris on charges of extortion, blackmail, and holding the player at gunpoint.
The suspected offenders in the Paris criminal court case include Pogba’s own brother Mathias and three boyhood friends, which has shocked the French football community.
Pogba’s career has been troubled since France’s incredible 2018 World Cup victory, when he scored against Croatia in the Moscow final. Tuesday’s trial adds to his already existing problems.
He experienced frequent injuries and poor form, which led to his exit from Manchester United in 2022, and he returned to Juventus, where he was in and out of treatment.
The Turin club suspended his contract last month after his 18-month suspension until March 2025 for doping.
It is alleged that the six defendants in Paris tried to extract 13 million euros ($13.5 million) from Pogba.
When the trial began, all of them—including Mathias—were in court, along with one defendant who had been placed on remand in custody. Paul Pogba himself was not present, and his attorneys have stated that he will not attend the trial. Defence attorneys requested that the trial be postponed on procedural grounds with the court because of a rule later. In August 2022, Mathias went public with a video on social media that promised revelations about his younger brother that were “likely to be explosive.”
In a second video, Mathias accused Paul Pogba of putting an evil spell on his France colleague, Kylian Mbappe.
According to a later statement by Paul Pogba’s solicitors and agent Rafaela Pimenta, the tapes “came on top of threats and attempts at extortion.”
That same July, he had already lodged criminal allegations in France and Italy.
In March 2022, Pogba told French investigators that children from the rough and tumble Paris district where he and Mathias grew up had “tricked” him.
Before he was seized by two hooded men brandishing assault guns and demanding 13 million euros for “services rendered,” he accused them of grabbing him and blamed him for not providing them with financial support.
According to Pogba at the time, he had only given them 100,000 euros.
The football player claimed to have also experienced pressure at the Juventus training facility, at one of his Manchester residences, and at the France national team’s Clairefontaine training facility.
“I also paid a bill of more than 57,000 euros that the same friends had accrued at the Adidas store on Paris’s glitzy Champs-Elysees avenue,” Pogba continued.
Pogba told broadcaster Al-Jazeera at the end of the previous season, “It’s been really difficult for me off the pitch, what’s happened, it’s been especially hard mentally.”
“The truth is that money can start a war and destroy a family; it changes people.”
When AFP contacted Pogba’s attorney Pierre-Jean Douvier prior to the case, he declined to comment.
