A FORMER Crawley Town player has been charged and detained over an alleged plot to extort money from his brother Paul Pogba.
Mathias Pogba, 32, along with four other people have been placed under formal investigation for extortion and criminal association, judicial sources told news agencies Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
He played for Crawley Town 17 times in 2015 and scored twice.
Paul Pogba, 29, is said to have been the target of extortion by childhood friends since March and had paid £85,000 to that group in spring, judicial sources told Reuters this month.
The Juventus midfielder filed a complaint with Turin prosecutors on July 16 claiming he was the target of a 13 million euro (£11.4m) blackmail plot.
The Paris prosecutors office opened an investigation last month into the allegations.
Mathias Pogba has denied taking part in extortion attempts against his brother. Mathias Pogba’s lawyer Richard Arbib said in a statement last week that his client wants “more than anything else” to ease the situation with his brother.
The case became public after Mathias Pogba threatened to share “explosive revelations” about his brother and France star Kylian Mbappe.
Paul Pogba won the World Cup with France in 2018.
He left Manchester United this summer for Juventus on a free transfer.
Older brother Mathias Pogba has played for a host of clubs in England, Scotland and was most recently playing in the fourth tier of French football for ASM Belfort.
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