Busted by Deliveroo: Former Premier League champion Samir Nasri arrested for alleged money laundering

Last Updated on 9 July 2026

It started with a takeaway. It has ended, for now, with a 10-hour interrogation by the Financial Investigation and Research Brigade of the Paris judicial police.

Samir Nasri has had a year that no publicist could spin and the paper trail that unravelled it all began not with a bank statement or a flight record.

Rather with a Deliveroo delivery to the former Arsenal and Manchester City star’s Paris apartment. Two hundred and twelve of them, to be precise.

The deliveroo orders that started everything

French tax authorities launched their investigation into Nasri after discovering that he placed 212 food delivery orders through Deliveroo to his Paris address in 2022 alone, damning evidence for a man who officially claimed tax residency in Dubai, where income tax is zero.

Between 2021 and 2023, flight records showed Nasri had spent 487 days in France compared with just 226 in the UAE. French authorities subsequently froze his bank accounts, seized assets and pursued a €5.5 million unpaid tax demand covering 2020 to 2022.

Nasri’s lawyer called the figure “imaginary” and insisted his client “is a perfect French citizen.” The 212 Deliveroo orders disagreed. But the tax case was only the beginning, as per L’Equipe.

On Thursday, Nasri was arrested and held for 10 hours by the French financial police as part of a separate investigation into organised money laundering linked to jailed drug trafficking kingpin Hakim Berrebouh, known as “Wild Boar.”

The allegations centre on Nasri’s co-ownership of XS nightclub in Ivry-sur-Seine, which investigators believe was used to launder drug trafficking proceeds. Nasri reportedly invested several hundred thousand euros in the venue while still at Manchester City in 2016.

He has since been released without formal charge, but a formal indictment remains possible.

Samir Nasri’s career was defined by controversy but the story keeps getting stranger

This is not the first time Nasri has faced serious trouble off the pitch. In 2018, he received an 18 month ban, after receiving an intravenous drip of nutrients that violated WADA regulations. He blamed that for curtailing what should have been a longer career.

Since retiring in 2021, he has worked as a pundit for Canal+, appearing regularly on their Champions League coverage. He was sitting in a television studio offering tactical analysis while tax inspectors were counting his burger orders.

The Deliveroo detail, absurd, mundane and entirely devastating, has become one of 2026’s most shared stories. But that’s not the only controversy he’s been involved in with his WAG connections fetching many stories.

French tax authorities armed with a food delivery app managed what years of financial investigation apparently could not. The money laundering arrest has since overtaken it in severity. Nasri has not been charged with anything. He also has not had a quiet year.