The management of the Professional Football League (LFP) is going through a zone of turbulence. More than three months after the fiasco of the allocation of television rights to Ligue 1 and a few days after the presentation, on October 30, of the Senate investigation report into the intervention of investment funds in French football, the LFP is now caught in legal turmoil.
According to information from The Teamconfirmed by The Worldsearches were carried out at the Paris headquarters of the LFP as well as at the offices of the Luxembourg fund CVC Capital Partners, and at the home of the president – re-elected in September – of the LFP, Vincent Labrune, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Bouches -du-Rhône). They are carried out as part of a preliminary investigation opened by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office forr “embezzlement of public funds”, “active and passive corruption of public officials” and “illegal taking of interests”.
These investigations, entrusted in July to the Paris research section, stem from the complaint filed, in November 2023, by the AC!! association. Anti-corruption targeting the underside of the creation, in 2022, of the League's commercial subsidiary, LFP Media, as part of an agreement with CVC.
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This financial agreement of 1.5 billion euros (in exchange for dividends of 13% of LFP Media's annual profits) with CVC was to make it possible to bail out the LFP, whose accounts were in the red. It gave rise to significant fees (37.5 million euros, or 2.5% of the total CVC envelope) paid to intermediaries, councils, but also to the leaders of the LFP.
“Conflict of interest”
As noted by the rapporteur of the Senate information mission, Michel Savin (Les Républicains, Isère), the amount of fees is ” superior ” to the allowances paid to the “majority of Ligue 1 clubs [33 millions d’euros] and the French Football Federation [FFF, 20 millions d’euros] ».
In detail, the Lazard Frères bank received 12 million euros, like the American bank Centerview – whose Paris branch is managed by Matthieu Pigasse (member of the supervisory board of the Le Monde Group) – as “pay for success (…)only if the operation is carried out », as Mr. Savin notes in his report. The two banks had approached the LFP after the election of Mr. Labrune in 2020, “in order to offer their assistance in fundraising”. As for the Darrois business law firm, it provided legal assistance, paid to the tune of 5 million euros, “depending on the diligence carried out”.
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