The Paris criminal court ruled on Thursday. While the Pogba trial, which opened on November 26, was supposed to determine whether the six defendants were collateral victims or perpetrators in the Paul Pogba kidnapping case, the verdict was handed down in the early hours of the morning.

All those prosecuted, the former Manchester United and Juventus player’s older brother Mathias Pogba, as well as five of his childhood friends, were sentenced to terms ranging from one year to eight years in prison.

Mathias Pogba, the gang’s most famous defendant, received 3 years in prison, of which 2 years with a simple conditional sentence and a fine of 20 thousand euros, with a home-based sentence under an electronic bracelet. Former friends of the victim, Boubacar C. (4 years in prison, including 2 years in prison), Machikour K. (4 years in prison, including 3 years in prison), Mamadou M. (5 years in prison, including 12 months in prison), Roushdane K. (8 years in prison with continuous detention) and Adama C. (5 years in prison by order of execution) all were sentenced more severely than Mathias Pogba.

The blackmail, pressure and culmination of this kidnapping in March 2022, at gunpoint, to extract 13 million euros from the midfielder of the French team, were blamed on six defendants during the judicial process.
This Pogba affair was discovered after videos were broadcast on Mathias Pogba’s social networks in August 2022, in which he specifically accused his brother Paul of harassing footballer Kylian Mbappé.

“How can a brother and friends get together to recover incredible sums of money from one of the most precious people in his life? “, asked one of the prosecutors, before presenting the indictment on December 4.

For Mathias Pogba, the prosecution had requested a year in prison with an electronic bracelet and a fine of 10,000 euros. According to the public prosecutor, the footballer’s eldest brother “was not aware of the beginning of the kidnapping plot”, but is accused of joining the group and playing “an active role” in the injury of Paul Pogba and the attempt to extract 13 million euros from him.