Uefa takes action against Viagogo over illegal Euro 2016 ticket sales

European football’s governing body Uefa has filed a criminal complaint against the ticketing website Viagogo for illegal ticket sales at Euro 2016.

Sources in Bordeaux told the Guardian that French police raided the hotel Le Provençal last Saturday, where Viagogo staff had booked a room and were handing out tickets for the game between Italy and Germany.

Prosecutors are now expected to open a case against Viagogo, a website that allows fans to sell each other tickets and takes a commission on the price.

In the hotel room were computers and envelopes full of tickets, according to reports on French website Sudouest.fr, while hundreds of fans were queuing outside to receive tickets.

The Viagogo staff are understood to have had local lawyers from Bordeaux already with them when French officers arrived.

Gregory Lepesqueux, legal counsel at Uefa, told Sudouest.fr that the fact Viagogo took a commission on tickets sold between fans meant it was technically selling tickets. Euro 2016 tickets can only be bought legally through Uefa itself.

He alleged that Viagogo had not provided buyers with information about where they were sitting, potentially leading to safety concerns if fans from rival teams were placed next to each other.

“Our entire policy of segregation, for reasons of safety, was put in jeopardy,” he said, adding that Uefa was concerned by the inability to trace supporters who bought tickets on the website.

Police also asked Viagogo staff to present their contracts of employment, which some of them were allegedly unable to do.

A spokesman for the football body said: “Uefa have filed criminal complaints against Viagogo with the public prosecutor in several cities in France, and we are also undertaking civil proceedings against Viagogo before the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris [high court of Paris].”

Social media sites such as Twitter featured multiple complaints from irate fans, some of whom said they had sold tickets via the company but not received any money.

Others said they had bought tickets which never arrived.

Many who complained said they could not get an answer from Viagogo despite repeated attempts.

Viagogo did not return the Guardian’s requests for comment.

The ticketing site was founded in London in 2006 by Eric Baker, who also set up StubHub before selling it to auction website eBay in 2007 for £160m.

Viagogo has attracted financial backing from former tennis stars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, both of whom sit on its board of directors.

Other backers include the Rothschild family of financiers, the chairman of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesy (LVMH), Bernard Arnault, and venture capital firm Index Ventures.

The company liquidated its assets in 2012 and moved to Switzerland before the London OIympic Games.

The change of headquarters meant Viagogo was no longer subject to UK laws banning resale of tickets for Olympic events.

Viagogo is among firms named by consumer rights group Which? that may have breached consumer rights regulations by selling tickets for music and sports events without publishing their face value or details such as seat number and row.

The government is in the midst of a review of secondary ticketing companies – firms that offer a platform for the resale of tickets that have already been bought.

The Guardian revealed earlier this year that professional touts are able to make vast sums of money by exploiting weaknesses in ticket websites to hoover up large amounts of tickets and resell them on secondary website such as Viagogo.