ZURICH, Switzerland : Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and France soccer great Michel Platini will appear before a Swiss court on Tuesday to hear whether the case that finished their careers in football will end with their acquittals or convictions for corruption.
The pair, once among the most powerful figures in global soccer, will appear at the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court 2-1/2 years after they were acquitted of fraud.
Swiss federal prosecutors rejected the decision at a lower court from 2022, leading to the new hearing in the town of Muttenz, near Basel. Both men deny the charge.
The case relates to a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.27 million)payment Blatter authorised for Platini, a former captain and manager of the French national team, which was made in 2011.
Platini and Blatter said the payment was a consultancy fee paid to Platini for work between 1998 and 2002, which the Frenchman said had been partly deferred because FIFA lacked the funds to pay him in full immediately.
The affair, which emerged in 2015 when Platini was president of European soccer body UEFA, torpedoed his hopes of eventually succeeding Blatter at the top of FIFA.
Blatter and Platini were suspended from football in 2015 by FIFA for ethics breaches, originally for eight years. Although their exclusions were later reduced, the ban ended their careers as senior football administrators.
The 2022 indictment accused Blatter and Platini of deceiving FIFA staff in 2010 and 2011 about an obligation for world soccer’s ruling body to pay Platini.
“They falsely claimed that FIFA owed Platini, or that Platini was entitled to, the sum of 2 million Swiss francs for advisory work. This deception was achieved through repeated untruthful claims made by both accused parties,” the indictment said.
The pair were cleared in the 2022 case after a judge accepted that their account of a “gentlemen’s agreement” for the payment was credible, while there were serious doubts about the prosecution’s allegation the payment was fraudulent.
Blatter, who was FIFA president for 17 years until 2015, has insisted he had done nothing wrong. Now a frail 89-year-old, he told Reuters he was the victim of a witch-hunt.
Platini, a three-times European Footballer of the Year, insisted the money was related to backpay.
“There’s no corruption, there’s no swindling, there’s nothing at all,” he told reporters at the start of the appeal.
His lawyer Dominic Nellen said the case was designed to stop Platini becoming FIFA president.
“Platini was the most likely successor to Blatter in 2015, but someone wanted him out of the way,” Nellen said. “At every turn there seems to be an attempt to stop Platini becoming president of FIFA.”
Blatter was eventually replaced by Gianni Infantino, who had worked for Platini at UEFA. Infantino owed his candidacy to the fact that Europe’s preferred candidate, Platini, was banned from football.
Infantino has denied helping to bring about Platini’s downfall, and said he only stepped up when UEFA asked him after the allegations against Platini emerged.
Prosecutors want a sentence of 20 months in jail, suspended for two years for both Blatter and Platini, and to confiscate the money.
Both sides can appeal against the judgement to the Swiss Federal Court, the country’s highest legal authority.
($1 = 0.8814 Swiss francs)
