Acquitted in the first instance in 2022, the former president of the FIFA Joseph Blatter and former UEFA President Michel Platini They appear again in the courts since Monday in Swiss in the case of suspicious payment when they were collaborators.
Their careers in the football offices were broken in 2015, in the middle of the scandals of the ‘Fifagate‘, which forced Blatter’s resignation. Platini thought of presenting himself to be his successor, but this matter ended up closing him.
Until Thursday, the Federal Criminal Court of Criminal Court, gathered in Muttenz (near Basel), will judge the 88 -year -old Swiss and 69 -year -old French for “unfair management”, “abuse of trust” and “documentary fraud”. Your decision is expected for March 25.
Baltter and Platini from friends to enemies
Blatter and Platini began as allies and ended up being rivals.
When Platini was impatient to succeed Blatter in the presidency of world football, the case of a controversial payment of two million Swiss francs (1.8 million euros) in favor of French, according to the accusation act was publicly known.
Both will have to give explanations about this matter again.
The issue would go back to when Platini was a Blatter advisor, between 1998 and 2002, during the first mandate of the Swiss at the head of FIFA. Both signed a contract with an annual remuneration of 300,000 Swiss francs “entirely paid by FIFA”, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
But in January 2011, “more than eight years after the end of his advisor activity,” the former French soccer player received those two million Swiss francs from Blatter FIFA.
For the accusation it was an “without foundation” payment, obtained mocking the internal controls of the FIFA through false statements of the two leaders, hence the accusation of fraud.
But the two men insist that initially an annual salary of one million Swiss francs had been decided, orally and without witnesses, and that FIFA’s finances did not allow that disbursement at the time, so it was carried out later.
The Infantino Shadow
“When Blatter asked me to be his advisor, he asked me what salary I wanted. I wondered that issue and told him that I wanted a million,” Platini said at the time, in the first instance. “SEPP told me that a million of what and I, to joke, I told him that of pesetas, liras, launch or Marcos, that he decided. Then he told me that Ok, a million Swiss francs,” he said.
Blatter pointed out for his part that they had closed “a pact of gentlemen” orally, without witnesses and without figurating in FIFA accounts, an unusual practice in the organization.
Both Blatter and Platini in turn denounced the possible role of the current president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, at the beginning of the investigation.
The Italo-Suizo leader was Platini’s number 2 in FIFA and when the Frenchman was out of play for the case, Infantino emerged as a candidate and won the election in 2016.
Infantino faced in 2020 a process also in Switzerland, for three secret meetings with the former prosecution’s chief. The Swiss justice filed that investigation in 2023.
