Four men will sit in the dock in Luxembourg in December on charges of intellectual forgery, after a last appeal to have the case thrown out was rejected earlier this year.

Alongside Lopez are his long-time business partner Éric Lux, co-founder of the Genii Capital investment firm, and two men connected to CS Fola Esch: Mauro Mariani, the club’s then vice-president, and François Delé. If convicted, the four face between three months and five years in prison.

Lopez is a Luxembourg-based investor best known in motorsport as the man behind the Enstone-based Lotus F1 outfit. Genii Capital bought the team from the Renault Group in 2009 and ran it under the Renault and then Lotus names until Renault bought it back at the end of 2015. The team’s on-track peak came with Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean, before financial trouble caught up with it in the middle of the decade.

The 2014 payment at the heart of the case

The dispute centers on a €2 million transfer in 2014 between Lotus F1 and CS Fola Esch, the Luxembourg football club Lopez has owned since 2007 and where he was president at the time. The defendants say the money was intended to fund a youth player development program at the club.

Read also: Infantino opens door to major FIFA reform after plan sparks rebellion

Prosecutors take a different view. They allege that documents used to justify the payment were forged, and that part of the money was subsequently routed on: to Lopez himself and to a Hong Kong-based company linked to Lux. That secondary trail is the basis for a separate money-laundering suspicion attached to the file.

The case has moved slowly. Luxembourg’s public prosecutor first asked the district court in chambers to refer Lopez to a criminal trial back in 2022. The defendants fought the referral through the courts, and Lopez and Lux took the challenge as far as the Court of Cassation, whose rejection this year cleared the way for the trial to be scheduled.

The defense: no personal enrichment

Through their lawyers, the four accused have consistently rejected the allegations, insisting that no personal enrichment took place through the transactions.

Lopez’s spokesperson, speaking in 2022 when the prosecutor first moved to send the case to court, said he “categorically denies the allegations against him” and is “confident that the [court in chambers], which has yet to hear his position, will clear his name.”

Read also: Harry Kane reveals future timeline as Man Utd and Barcelona circle

The trial opens in Luxembourg in December 2026.

Read also: Atlético Madrid launch brutal response to Mourinho