PSG Coach Galtier Files Defamation Lawsuit Amid Racism Allegations

PSG coach Christophe Galtier, suspected of having made discriminatory remarks during his time at OGC Nice, filed a complaint on Friday, April 21, for defamation and dissemination of information endangering others with the national center for the fight against online hate. This complaint targets Julien Fournier, former football director of OGC Nice, as well as two journalists, Daniel Riolo and Romain Molina. His lawyer, Olivier Martin, said that the French technician has also filed another complaint for harassment and death threats against X. He hopes that the Paris prosecutor will act with the same speed as the Nice prosecutor so that his client can get out of this case as soon as possible. According to him, the judicial police investigators in Nice have not yet interviewed Christophe Galtier.

The Nice prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation into suspicions of "discrimination based on a supposed race or religion" following the leak of an email in which the PSG coach was accused of having made racist and Islamophobic remarks when he was in charge of OGC Nice. "He came into my office and greeted his son [who is also his agent, editor’s note], who told me ’you can check with my father what I told you’. Once his son had left, I told Christophe about the discussion I had just had and asked him if it was all true. He then replied that ’yes’ and that I had to take into account the ’reality of the city’; and that indeed, we could not have so many blacks and Muslims in the team," Julien Fournier, former general manager of OGC Nice, recounted in an email addressed to Ineos’ management, the club’s owner.

On Friday, searches were carried out on the premises of OGC Nice.