Do we like Nasser Al-Khelaifi?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Cleared in the Swiss courts and no harmful words of his own turned up, but there is a fresh probe and no clear record of standing up for others.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi is the man who runs Paris Saint-Germain for Qatar's state-backed owners, and he chairs the beIN media empire as well. He sits on the UEFA executive committee and, per the club, represents European clubs on the FIFA Council. In plain terms, he is one of the most powerful blokes in world football, and he got there through Qatar's money and political connections.
The big saga is the Swiss case about World Cup TV rights. Swiss prosecutors accused him of letting former FIFA number two Jerome Valcke use an Italian villa for free. In December 2025 Switzerland's supreme court upheld his acquittal, the third in five years, and his lawyers called it “a complete vindication”. Valcke was convicted separately on unrelated charges.
That's not the only file. In February 2025 French judges preliminarily charged him with complicity in alleged vote-buying and alleged abuse of power, in a probe over a 2018 shareholder vote at the Lagardère media group. He rejected the accusations, and it was a preliminary charge, not a trial.
The newest stoush is in France. Anticor, an anti-corruption group, complained about his involvement in the July 2024 talks on the Ligue 1 broadcast deal, which involved his own beIN. The Paris prosecutor confirmed an investigation, no charges have been reported, and his circle says he was answering the clubs' worries about the league's finances.
On the harm test, we found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants in his own words, which is a gap as much as a clean sheet. What we did find is him defending Qatar at the 2022 World Cup: he conceded “we are not perfect”, but said the criticism was blown out of proportion. When he was asked about reports on migrant workers, the report doesn't show him addressing them directly.
On the good stuff, we couldn't open a source we trust on his own giving, so we won't pad it out. He has said he is “very, very happy” to stay at PSG rather than chase the FIFA presidency. Score of 5: not a villain on the record we found, not someone we can point to as backing the crowd that reads this page.