PARIS (AP) — A brother of World Cup winner Paul Pogba was sentenced to three years in prison — two of which are suspended — by a Paris criminal court Thursday in an extortion and kidnapping case.
Mathias Pogba has already spent time in detention and the remainder of the sentence will be served under house arrest with electronic monitoring. This sentence was in line with the prosecution’s request. His lawyer said he would likely appeal the ruling.
“He is in a state of shock. From the outset, he has maintained his innocence," lawyer Mbeko Tabula said. “They did not not take into account the fact that he has been manipulated, the fact that he has been forced to do things beyond his control.”
The case in court took place without the former Manchester United and Juventus player.
A judge ordered Mathias Pogba and five other men to stand trial following an investigation into whether Paul Pogba was the target of extortion by Mathias and childhood friends in 2022.
Mathias went on trial last month “for the offenses of attempted extortion and criminal conspiracy."
The five others demanded 13 million euros ($13.6 million) from the France midfielder, who was held up at gunpoint by hooded men in March 2022. The defendants repeatedly intimidated Paul, claiming he should have supported them after he became an international soccer star. They were accused of extortion, abduction and confinement to facilitate a crime, as well as criminal conspiracy.
Roushdane K., suspected of masterminding the blackmail, was sentenced to eight years in prison. The others also received jail terms.
According to the legal documents, the court also found that Paul had suffered economic losses of 197,000 euros ($204,000) and moral losses of 50,000 euros ($52,000). It ordered all the defendants except Mathias to jointly pay this sum to the former Juve player.
During the investigation, Paul said he paid 100,000 euros ($104,000) to the organized group including his brother.
The case became public after Mathias posted threats on social media to share “explosive” revelations about his brother, fellow French star Kylian Mbappé and Paul’s agent Rafaela Pimenta. Mathias was also a soccer player who spent most of his career with lower-tier teams in Europe.
Once one of the world’s top midfielders, Paul has made the headlines in recent years more often for his off-field problems than for his sporting ability.
This month, Juventus said it came to “a mutual agreement” with Paul to cancel his contract despite the France World Cup winner having a ban for doping slashed last month. The Serie A club never seemed overly enthusiastic about welcoming Paul back after his four-year ban for doping was reduced to 18 months following an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Paul will be free to resume his career in March.
Paul tested positive for testosterone in August last year and was handed the maximum punishment by Italy’s anti-doping court.
But CAS judges cut Paul’s ban as they acknowledged a lack of intent and said his positive test was the result of erroneously taking a supplement prescribed to him by a medical doctor in Florida. Paul’s contract with Juventus was set to expire in June 2026.
In 2016, Paul became the then-most expensive soccer player in history when he joined Man United from Juventus for a fee of 105 million euros ($116 million).
He starred in France’s World Cup triumph in 2018 but returned to Juventus as a free agent in 2022. Injuries limited him to just eight Serie A appearances in his second spell at the club before his ban last year.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Juventus' Paul Pogba controls the ball during an Italian Cup soccer match between Internazionale and Juventus, at the Giuseppe Meazza San Siro Stadium, in Milan, Italy, April 26, 2023. (Spada/LaPresse via AP, File)
FILE - Soccer players Mathias Pogba, left, and Paul Pogba pose for photographers upon arrival at the MTV European Music Awards 2017 in London, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. (Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP, File)
CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Swiss investigators believe sparkling flares atop Champagne bottles started a fire in a bar at an Alpine ski resort that left 40 people dead and another 119 injured during a New Year’s celebration.
Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar in southwestern Switzerland in the early hours of Thursday.
The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue. Overnight, the Le Constellation bar morphed from a scene of revelry into the site of one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.
Here’s what we know:
The blaze broke out around 1:30 a.m. Thursday during a holiday celebration inside the Le Constellation bar.
Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female colleague on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.
People tried to escape from a nightclub area in the basement, up a flight of stairs and through a narrow door, causing a crowd surge, one of the women said.
A young man at the scene said people smashed windows to escape, reported BFMTV. He said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames.
Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation, rushed to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend who escaped the inferno. He described a scene of people trapped on the ground, severely injured and burned.
“I have seen horror and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” Campolo told French broadcaster TF1.
Swiss officials described the blaze as a likely flashover, meaning that it triggered the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently.
The injured suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation. Some were flown to specialist hospitals across the country and elsewhere in Europe.
Authorities urged people to show caution in the coming days to avoid any incidents that could require the already overwhelmed medical resources.
Out of the 119 injured, 113 have now been identified, officials said Friday.
The severity of the burns has made it very difficult to identify bodies, bringing fresh agony for families who now must hand over DNA samples to authorities. In some cases, wallets and any ID documents inside turned to ash in the flames.
Emanuele Galeppini, a promising 17-year-old Italian golfer who competed internationally, is officially listed as one of Italy’s missing nationals. His uncle Sebastiano Galeppini told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting the DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation on its website announced that he had died.
Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said that 13 Italian citizens were injured and six remained missing by midday Friday. Galeppini’s name was on the missing persons list.
France's foreign ministry said eight French people are missing and another nine are among the injured. Top-flight French soccer team FC Metz said one of its trainee players, 19-year-old Tahirys Dos Santos, was badly burned and has been transferred by plane to Germany for treatment.
On Instagram, an account filled up with photos of people who remained unaccounted for, with their friends and relatives begging for tips about the whereabouts of the missing.
The injured include 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland, Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said Friday. The nationalities of 14 people remain unclear.
The nearby regional hospital in Sion took in a flood of victims from the fire. Its general director, Eric Bonvin, recounted how staff scrambled to determine the extent of people’s injuries.
The hospital — in the heart of the Alps and no stranger to winter sports accidents — was well staffed for the end of the year, when crowds flock to the mountains. On top of that, many colleagues who had not been scheduled to work rushed in to lend a hand.
Still the hospital, which is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the resort by air, quickly hit full capacity, authorities said, taking in about 80 seriously injured people in just three hours.
As of Friday, the hospital still had about 30 seriously injured patients in its care.
With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit.
The resort will host the best men’s and women’s downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn, for their final events before the Milan Cortina Olympics in February.
The town’s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club, down the street from the bar, stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.
Dazio reported from Berlin and Leicester reported from Sion, Switzerland. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
A police officer helps a boy to light a candle near the sealed off Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, where a devastating fire left dead and injured during the New Year's celebrations. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Police officers inspect the area where a fire broke out at the Le Constellation bar and lounge leaving people dead and injured, during New Year’s celebration, in Crans-Montana, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)
