Sources familiar with the matter confirmed a RMC Sports report on Tuesday.
Gerald Darmanin, the Interior Minister, spoke Monday of "massive industrial and organised" ticket fraud. He cited 30,000-40,000 English tourists at the Stade de France, "either without tickets or with forged banknotes". He was happy to provide a percentage of "70%", of counterfeit paper notes that were detected during pre-filtering on English side. However, he did not give any figures.
Sources close to the case say that 2,800 "scanned counterfeit tickets" are an "exceptional figure to be cautious about," according to Me Barthelemy (a lawyer representing French supporters' groups) who was present at Saturday's match. He explains that E-tickets needed to be activated and that there were computer bugs at the gate which caused some fake tickets to be scanned.
"Someone told one of my friends that he had a fake ticket ..."
Robertson, the Liverpool footballer, offered tickets to family members and I want to see proof. Pierre Barthelemy recalled that they were informed at the turnstiles that these tickets were fake after they had entered.
The Paris judicial police has been assigned an investigation into the alleged ticket-fraud. UEFA has also opened an independent investigation. The Senate, for its part, announced that it would soon hear Gerald Darmanin and Amelie Poudea-Castera, Ministers of Interior and Sports.
The Minister of Sports declared, "The investigations [...]will establish the accuracy of facts, traffic or no traffic and what exactly happened," during a visit to Paris Olympics' organizing committee. She added, "We all need understanding."
