LAUSANA.- The acquittal of Michel Platini and SEPP Blatterjudged again in Swiss In March for a case of alleged corruption that closed the door to former French soccer player to preside over the FIFAIt is now definitive in the absence of prosecution evidence.
“The Public Ministry of the Confederation (MPC) renounces to resort”, thus accepting “the verdict issued in the first and second instance,” said the Swiss Prosecutor’s Office this Thursday in a statement.
By accepting his defeat, since on two occasions he had claimed the prison sentence against the defendants without convincing the judges, the MPC ends ten years of a process with political ramifications.
“I know it was a story to prevent me from being president of FIFA,” Platini had launched.
The two former leaders were accused of having “obtained illegally, to the detriment of FIFA, a payment of 2 million Swiss francs (2.5 million dollars) in favor of Michel Platini,” according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Defense and accusation coincided at one point: the Triple Golden Ball was a SEPP Blatter advisor between 1998 and 2002, during the first term of the latter at the head of FIFA, and the two men signed in 1999 a contract that established an annual remuneration of 300,000 Swiss francs, paid entirely by FIFA.
But in January 2011, the former Juventus midfielder-with half in the president of UEFA (2007-2015)-“enforced a debt of 2 million Swiss francs”, qualified as “false invoice” by the accusation.
The two men insisted that they had agreed from the beginning an annual salary of one million Swiss francs, through a “gentlemen agreement” and without witnesses, without FIFA finance allowing payment at the time.
Direct consequences
The output of the case in mid -2015, just after the resignation of SEPP Blatter following a scandal waterfall, took Michel Platini from the race for the presidency of FIFA, clearing the path for Gianni Infantino, at that time the right arm of French in UEFA.
