2,800 fake banknotes would have been scanned (but this figure should be taken with caution)

The French Football Federation and UEFA have assessed the number of “fake tickets scanned” at “2,800” on Saturday at the Stade de France during the Champions League final, a source familiar with the matter told AFP. Tuesday, confirming information from RMC Sports.

The FFF and UEFA gave this assessment during the meeting Monday at the Ministry of Sports intended to draw lessons from the fiasco of this meeting. But among these 2,800 fake tickets, there may be real tickets that have been incorrectly activated, according to a ticketing specialist interviewed by AFP.

On Monday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin spoke of a “massive, industrial and organized” ticket fraud that would be the cause of the chaos, evoking 30,000 to 40,000 English supporters at the Stade de France “either without a ticket or with counterfeit tickets. But the minister was content to give a percentage of “70%” of counterfeit paper notes detected during pre-filtering on the English side, without giving a figure.

A number to consider with caution

The 2,800 “counterfeit tickets scanned”, according to sources familiar with the matter, are a figure “to be taken with precaution”, according to Me Barthélémy, lawyer for groups of French supporters and present at the match on Saturday evening. “E-tickets had to be activated, and there were breakdowns, computer bugs at the gates which caused some real tickets to be scanned as fake,” he explains.

“I want proof of this in the testimony of Robertson, the Liverpool player, who offered official tickets to relatives. Once at the turnstiles, they were told that these tickets were fake, ”recalled Pierre Barthélémy. An investigation has been entrusted to the Paris judicial police into the alleged ticket fraud and UEFA has launched an independent investigation to shed light on Saturday’s incidents.

“The investigations (…) will establish the accuracy of the facts, the volumes, traffic or no traffic, the origin of this traffic, and what exactly happened”, declared the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castera in margin of a visit to the organizing committee of the Paris Olympics. “We all need to understand,” she added.