Three successive presidents of the Gazelec Football Club Ajaccio (GFCA) will be tried on February 8 and 9, 2023 for concealed work and abuse of corporate assets, the Marseille criminal court announced on Friday during a pretrial hearing. The SAS Gazelec Football Club Ajaccio and the association Gazelec Foot Club Olympique Ajaccio will also appear for these same facts. The club had been seized by the Marseille prosecutor’s office some 200,000 euros last fall.
This URSSAF fraud file has its source in the sprawling financial affair involving the alleged leaders of the Corsican criminal gang of Petit Bar investigated by the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Marseille. Olivier Miniconi, who served as president of the GFCA for fourteen years, as well as his successors, Christophe Ettori and Mathieu Messina, are suspected of having concealed bonuses, benefits in kind and mileage allowances granted to players and employees for a global amount of 1,124,350 euros, over a period from January 1, 2018 to June 30, 2021. These alleged maneuvers would have caused damage that the organization collecting social contributions estimates around 300,000 euros.
In February, at the end of their police custody, the three defendants had been placed under judicial supervision with the obligation to pay a bond of 15,000 euros. The court refused on Friday to lift the ban on managing Mathieu Messina which, according to his lawyer Me Fabien Perez, deprives him of income. Prosecutor Emilie Almero opposed the relaxation of this judicial control, recalling that he received 18,000 euros per year from his mandate as deputy mayor of Menton.
Christophe Ettori, a former football player, is also accused of concealment of misuse of corporate assets committed under the presidency of Mathieu Messina, costed by the prosecution at 31,650 euros. These would be benefits in kind granted to Mr Ettori. The prosecution held against him the legal recidivism, since he was sentenced in March 2018 for association of criminals by the Assize Court of Bouches-du-Rhône to five years in prison suspended in the context of a case of ‘assassination. He is the brother of Mickaël Ettori, presented as one of the influential members of the Petit Bar gang, currently on the run.
