Nice prosecutor orders suspended prison sentence for ‘guilty’ Christophe Galtier

Nice’s public prosecutor, Damien Martinelli, has ordered a suspended prison sentence and a €45,000 fine for former OGC Nice and Paris Saint-Germain manager Christophe Galtier. 

Galtier was present at a hearing in Nice on Friday, charged by the French authorities with moral harassment and ethnic, racial or religious discrimination, which could entail anything up to a three-year prison sentence and a €45,000 fine. The manager, now managing Qatari side Al-Duhail, has repeatedly denied the allegations, which surfaced after a leaked email from former colleague and Nice sporting director Julien Fournier was made public. The transcript of the leaked email can be read here. 

The former Nice and PSG manager took to the bar to defend himself in court yesterday after his lawyer, Sébastien Schapira, had called for proceedings to be nullified in the morning.  “If I made these comments, they would be racist and discriminatory […] these comments, I didn’t make them,” Galtier told the hearing.

However, on Friday evening, after a nine-hour hearing, Nice’s prosecutor ordered a 12-month suspended prison sentence and a €45,000 fine. “Personally, I find that football is the victim in this file […] the players are the principles, whilst the values of the [French] Republic are also victims. I request that you declare Christophe Galtier guilty,” said the prosecutor. 

In the wake of the order, Galtier’s lawyer said, “Where is the proof?” whilst also accusing Fournier’s entourage of “brainwashing”. The judge’s decision on the affair will be rendered next week, at 13:30 local time on Thursday 21st December. 

GFFN | Luke Entwistle