French Qatargate: Polynesian Branch Advances to Trial as Prosecutor Targets bin Hammam and Temarii

France's Parquet national financier has formally requested that the so-called Polynesian branch of the sprawling Qatargate corruption investigation advance to trial, targeting four individuals — among them Qatari billionaire and former Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed bin Hammam and former FIFA vice-president Reynald Temarii — over alleged corruption linked to Qatar's winning 2010 bid to host the 2022 World Cup. The request, reported by Le Monde on 3 September 2026, represents the most consequential legal escalation yet in the French limb of a probe that has shadowed Qatar's World Cup project for more than a decade. The Polynesian branch centers on Temarii, the Tahiti-born former FIFA executive committee member, and the alleged payments and favours routed through Oceania football channels that prosecutors say were part of a broader vote-buying operation to secure Qatar's 2022 hosting rights. Bin Hammam, already banned for life from football by FIFA's ethics committee in 2011 over unrelated bribery allegations, has long been described by investigators as the alleged architect of a slush-fund network used to cultivate support for Qatar's bid. The French prosecutor's request to send the case to trial signals that magistrates believe the evidence meets the threshold for criminal adjudication. Critics of Qatar's World Cup have long argued that the 2010 vote was secured through systematic corruption, and that FIFA's internal reforms never fully reckoned with the scale of the alleged scheme. The French proceedings are significant because they operate independently of FIFA's own (largely closed) disciplinary process and carry the weight of a national financial prosecutor with subpoena and asset-seizure powers. If the investigating magistrates approve the request, the case would move to a criminal trial where the corruption allegations — still formally unproven — would finally be tested in open court. Qatari officials and bin Hammam have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy has consistently maintained that the 2022 World Cup was won through a legitimate bid. The French request is a prosecutorial step, not a conviction: the underlying bribery claims remain allegations until adjudicated. Nonetheless, the move keeps the corruption narrative around Qatar's World Cup alive in the legal record more than a decade after the vote, and adds a formal legal-sanctions dimension to the long-running sportswashing critique.