Tuesday 22 January 2019 22:09, UK
Paris Saint-Germain have been fined €100,000 (£87,705) after their scouts were revealed to have operated a policy of listing the ethnic origins of young recruits.
The French league's disciplinary commission made the ruling after hearing from former officials involved in recruitment between 2013 and 2018, as well as PSG general manager Jean-Claude Blanc, who was not sanctioned.
Blanc has been at the Ligue 1 club since 2011 but PSG previously said the club's general management did not know there was an ethnic registration system in the recruitment department.
Last November, the investigative website Mediapart, which based its allegations on the so-called 'Football Leaks' documents, claimed PSG had until the spring of 2018 asked recruiters to record the origin of players in four categories: 'Francais' (French), 'Maghrebin' (North African), 'Antillais' (West Indian), and 'Afrique noire' (Black African).
It is against French law to collect personal data which reveals racial or ethnic origins of individuals.
In 2014, the director of the club's recruitment unit across the country, excluding the Paris region, defended at a meeting the ethnic vision of the team, justifying a discriminatory recruitment policy, Mediapart said.
On November 8 last year, Qatari-owned PSG acknowledged and condemned the existence of the ethnic identity files.
"Paris Saint-Germain confirms that forms with illegal contents were used between 2013 and 2018 by the recruitment cell of the training academy dedicated to regions outside Ile-de-France (Paris area)," PSG said.
"These forms were an individual initiative of the head of this department."
