Kylian Mbappé's visit to Stockholm, from October 9 to 11, while the French football team faced Israel in the Nations League, continues to cause a stir. After being criticized for his Swedish escapade, while officially recovering from a thigh injury, the French captain finds himself implicated in a far more serious affair. According to the usually well-informed Swedish tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen, an investigation has since been opened against the player for rape and sexual assault.
On Tuesday, October 15, the Stockholm prosecutor's office confirmed in a press release that a rape complaint had been registered by the police, in connection with "an incident that occurred on October 10 in a hotel in central Stockholm," without mentioning any names.
According to the two tabloids, Mbappé is the target. According to Expressen, the footballer is the subject of "reasonable suspicion." This is the lowest level of suspicion under Swedish law. "This means that there are concrete circumstances that strongly suggest that the person has committed the act to which the suspicions refer," according to the Swedish police's website. However, the level of suspicion does not, at this stage, justify an arrest.
According to the tabloids that reported Mbappé's presence in the Swedish capital at the end of last week, the striker arrived via a private jet at Stockholm-Bromma airport on Wednesday, October 9. He stayed at the Bank Hotel – a luxury hotel that welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife during their official visit to Sweden at the end of January. On Thursday, October 10, Mbappé, with his face partly concealed behind a black surgical mask, was photographed leaving restaurant Chez Jolie with three of his close friends: his bodyguard, his personal assistant and his former Paris Saint-Germain teammate Nordi Mukiele.
Aftonbladet reported that the group then spent the evening at V, a select club in the Stureplan district of central Stockholm, where the footballer and his entourage had partly privately booked on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. According to the newspaper, "there was no guest list for the event. But the players themselves, as well as the staff of the discotheque, had invited people, the majority of whom were women. There were 30 people in all," wrote the tabloid while adding that cell phones were not allowed at the event. Mbappé left for Corsica at around 2 pm on Friday, October 11.
On Monday, October 14, Aftonbladet published an initial article on its website, revealing that Swedish forensic technicians had visited the Bank Hotel that very morning. The vaguely worded article gave almost no information, except that the investigation was linked to a rape committed "in central Stockholm" on Thursday, October 10. "The police took up the complaint on Saturday after the woman had sought medical treatment," explained the newspaper, while already making a connection with Mbappé's presence in the Swedish capital, without implicating him.
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