The former president of the SCO football club of Angers (L1) Saïd Chabane was placed in police custody on Tuesday April 4 as part of an investigation for “organized money laundering”, learned the Agency. France-Presse with his lawyer, Me Bernard Benaiem, confirming information from TF1-LCI.
The preliminary investigation opened since June 2022 at the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office also targets facts of “illegal exercise of the profession of sports agent” and has been entrusted to the central racing and gaming department.
The manager and owner of the club at more than 99%, who had held this position since 2011, had resigned on March 29, and had been replaced by his son, Romain. Teddy Kefalas had been appointed deputy chairman and will be “in charge of the operational aspects”.
In mid-March, he was also shaken by sexist comments that cost coach Abdel Bouhazama his job. The latter having been appointed barely a few months earlier to replace Gérald Baticle, dismissed on November 22.
Chute inexorable d’Angers
A case that was added to the lawsuits initiated at the beginning of 2020 against the now ex-president, for aggravated sexual assault. Despite his denials, six women who were his employees at the time of the facts denounced, including four at the SCO, have filed a complaint against him and a trial is looming.
The dismissal of sports director Olivier Pickeu in the spring of 2020 and other collaborators, which earned the club a subscription to the prud’hommes, then the separation with the emblematic coach Stéphane Moulin, the following year, precipitated the inexorable fall of Angers.
Due to serious financial difficulties, the team was also forced to sell a good part of its workforce last summer. This winter, the SCO, already without illusions about its future in L1, has also resolved to let slip two of Morocco’s heroes at the 2022 World Cup, Sofiane Boufal (Al-Rayyan) and Azzedine Ounahi (Marseille), history of earn some cash.
At the beginning of March, the ultras of the kop de la Butte 1992 had estimated in a press release that Saïd Chabane “locked himself into his role of authoritarian president, dismissing staff who disagreed with his methods and placing characters as unbearable as they were incompetent in key positions, provided they are blindly loyal to him”.
