Blatter and Platini cleared in FIFA graft case

MUTTENZ: Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and ex-UEFA chief Michel Platini on Tuesday were acquitted on appeal by a Swiss court in a long-running corruption case that shattered their careers as the most powerful figures in world football.

Blatter, 89, and Platini, 69, listened in silence as the Extraordinary Court of Appeal clerk in the town of Muttenz, near Basel, read out a decision identical to the one handed down in 2022, which had initially cleared them.

Prosectors had requested suspended sentences of 20 months for the pair, but charges of fraud, for which they risked five years’ imprisonment, as well as disloyal management, breach of trust and forgery of documents were all dismissed.

After almost 10 years of legal proceedings, a final appeal is still possible before the Swiss Supreme Court, but only on limited legal grounds. The prosecutors’ office said in a statement it “will decide about how to further proceed”.

“The persecution by FIFA and some Swiss federal prosecutors for 10 years is now over,” Platini told reporters. “Today my honour is restored, and I’m very happy.”

Platini, a former France captain and manager, said he felt “from the start” that the purpose of the affair was to prevent him “from being president of FIFA”.

“I know that for my enemies, it was time that was important… They kept me out for 10 years,” continued Platini, whose downfall cleared the way for the election in early 2016 of Gianni Infantino as FIFA boss.

Ex-FIFA boss Blatter and France great Platini to learn fate in corruption case

Blatter and Platini returned to court earlier this month on charges stemming from a delayed payment of two million Swiss francs (1.8 million euros) FIFA made to Platini in 2011 for consultancy services.

“After two acquittals, the federal prosecutor’s office must also admit that this criminal procedure has definitively failed. Michel Platini must finally be left alone in criminal matters,” said Dominic Nellen, Platini’s lawyer.

‘Gentlemen’s agreement’

The case began in 2015 when Blatter quit as head of FIFA in a corruption crisis.

Blatter and Platini were initially acquitted by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in June 2022, but the Swiss Attorney General’s office immediately appealed that verdict.

The defence and prosecution agreed that Platini did advise Blatter between 1998 and 2002, during the Swiss administrator’s first term at the head of FIFA, and that in 1999 the two men signed a contract agreeing an annual remuneration of 300,000 Swiss francs, to be “paid in full by FIFA”.

Blatter and Platini said that at the start they agreed orally, and without witnesses, on an annual salary of one million Swiss francs, but FIFA’s financial state did not allow for immediate payment. Blatter called it a “gentlemen’s agreement”.

Prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand said the argument was implausible. Even if FIFA had transferred one million Swiss francs to Platini in 1999, it would still have had “more than 21 million francs in cash”, and its reserves had reached 328 million in 2002.

To agree such a sum without a written record, without witnesses and without ever making provision for it in the accounts was, he said, “contrary to commercial practice” as well as to FIFA’s norms.

In January 2011, “more than eight years after the end of his activity as advisor”, Platini “claimed a debt of two million Swiss francs”, which FIFA paid.

Prosecutors argued that this was an “unfounded” payment, obtained by “cleverly misleading” FIFA’s internal controls through false statements made by the two executives.

At the time, Blatter was running for re-election as FIFA president and Platini had become head of European football. Platini backed Blatter in his successful bid for a fourth term in charge of FIFA.

Both men were eventually banned from football by FIFA’s ethics committee.