The world football's governing body awarded Qatar the right to host the tournament after a vote in 2010, with France as one of its main backers, according to The Daily Telegraph. The bidding process has since raised bribery concerns.
The British newspaper cited its sources close to the probe as saying that investigators suspected Sarkozy might have capitalized on French-Qatari transactions that took place around the time of the bidding, such as the 2011 sale of a Paris football club to the oil-rich Gulf emirate for 50 million euros.
The ethics committee of the FIFA, which has been at the heart of a massive corruption scandal, has conducted an inquiry into bidding fraud claims. A report published in June 2017 stated there was no sign that Russia or Qatar had tried to tilt the results of bidding for 2018 and 2022 games in their favor.
