At the Paris Criminal Court,
As the trial in the Pogba case draws to a close, after the hearings of the six defendants, it was the turn of the two prosecutors to present the prosecution's submissions on Wednesday. For almost three hours, in this room where it seems no one thought to turn on the heating, they patiently worked to untangle the threads of this giant ball of wool and deliver a ready-made scenario. of what actually happened, according to her.
Far from the victim theory that the defendants tried to sell in court last week, the prosecution drew a completely different picture, dark, sordid. That of a group of friends totally dependent on the fortune of their friend who has become a world football star and who, frustrated to see the latter cut ties with them at the same time as the cash tap at the start of 2022, instigates a totally crazy plan straight out of a bad thriller.
Not mobile, really?
After having gone through the (meager) savings of the defendants, when they were not completely overdrawn and/or riddled with debt – one of them, Adama C., even staying with his family in a hotel in the Emirates while he receives no income – the prosecutor declares that the gang “created a situation of financial dependence for Paul Pogba”.
“We stopped hearing that they had no motive, I think there is a misunderstanding,” she exclaims. They watched their friend become a millionaire and cut ties with them for the first time in his life. » “This breakdown in financial relations was the breeding ground for the offenses for which you are targeted,” she tells them, eye to eye. From her chair, the President also scrutinizes them for a long time, as if to dissect the slightest reaction on their faces.
Opposing the version given by Paul Pogba during his various hearings before the police and those, “fluctuating”, of his ex-childhood friends, the two prosecutors tried to prove that the trap of March 19, 2022 had nothing to do with it. a friendly meeting and that everyone, apart from Mathias Pogba, had played a very specific role in attracting the footballer into their net. And these list the multiple prior meetings and the (very) numerous exchanges of messages between the five individuals with the aim of organizing the trap.
“On March 7, there was a first meeting between five defendants (Machikour K., Roushdane K., Mamadou M., Boubacar C. and Adama C.), they were all there. On March 10, we noted intense exchanges between Adama C. and Mamamadou, with nine voices, they said that they were going to contact the 'brothers' (Roushdane and Machikour K.), lists the magistrate. On the morning of March 19, everything was ready, everything had been carefully prepared. »
A sewn-in-white scenario
For the prosecution, the fact that three of the five accused of kidnapping left the Montévrain apartment without flinching, a few minutes before the arrival of the two masked robbers, in no way proves their innocence. On the contrary. “If everyone had been present in the room at that time, perhaps Mr. Paul Pogba would have tried to put his numbers into play against the two hooded and armed men,” says a prosecutor, before awarding the three remained outside the role of “simply lookouts”.
As for the presence of Roushdane K., the alleged mastermind of the commando operation, they justify it by his role as “big brother”, the one to whom we dare not oppose, and whose judicial CV, he who has having already spent fifteen years of his life behind bars for attempted murder and other assaults of all kinds, makes him more capable of hiring professional robbers.
-“It was essential to recruit armed men so that Paul would be convinced that his friends had nothing to do with it,” says one of the magistrates. “Who knew that Paul Pogba would be in this apartment?, asks the other. No one other than the five defendants. It was one of the five defendants who gave the address to the attackers. It was one of the five defendants who gave the code to the attackers. Roushdane explains it himself. He gave the access codes to knowledge. It was necessarily through Roushdane K. that these two individuals were recruited. »
Mathias Pogba, proven supporting role
“For five and a half months, the defendants coordinated their actions. The pressures were continuous, polymorphous and indirect,” they continue, listing the numerous visits made in the weeks following the attack on Paul Pogba, on July 13 at the Juve training center, but also to his mother, Yeo Moriba, the first time at her home in Santeny in Val-de-Marne, the second in a hotel in Nice where she stayed in July.
This is when Mathias Pogba enters the scene. This brother they describe as holding a grudge based on old notes recorded in his iPhone from 2017, in which Mathias Pogba had listed a certain number of recriminations against Paul.
Here is an excerpt: “Our relations had been quite good since 2015, but they began to deteriorate due to the influence of his agents. He had promised to take care of the family, to take care of them, to buy them houses, to finance their businesses. But of course, there was disillusionment. What you need to understand here is my brother's immense level of ingratitude. »
“You cannot be both a puppet and an architect”
If they clearly state that “the criminal project was already constructed when Mathias Pogba joined him, however he knew that the goal of the group was to take the 13 million euros from Paul, that there was a desire to cause harm. Mathias is not passive, he takes initiatives, he suggests trips (to Turin, to the mother's) and when he encounters the reluctance of his little brother, he extends the pressure to the family circle, as well as to the mother ( Yeo Moriba).
Alone to plead in favor of his client, Wednesday, with that of Machikour K. (the other four take place this Thursday, from 1:30 p.m.), Me Mbeko Tabula protests that we can base ourselves on banal stories of resentment from one brother towards the other to attribute to Mathias Pogba any desire on the part of the latter to participate in the extortion of his younger brother.
“We cannot be both the puppet and the architect of the project, it is either one or the other,” he argues, before the president puts an end to the arguments and suspends the session. While Mathias Pogba faces up to one year in prison with the sentence served at his home, while wearing an electronic bracelet, the five other defendants face sentences ranging from two to eight years in prison.
