Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini yesterday won again in court and now lead 2-0 in trial verdicts against Swiss federal prosecutors.
The former FIFA president and former UEFA president were acquitted for a second time on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of more than US$2 million of FIFA money in 2011.
The pair, once among the most powerful figures in global soccer, were cleared of the charges at the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in Muttenz, near Basel.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The hearing came after Swiss federal prosecutors appealed their July 2022 acquittal at a lower court, and asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years.
“After two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must realize that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed. Michel Platini must finally be left in peace in criminal matters,” Platini’s lawyer, Dominic Nellen, said in a statement.
Blatter, 89, and Platini, 69, have consistently denied wrongdoing in the decade-long case that swung on their claims of a verbal agreement to one day settle the money in question.
Blatter approved FIFA paying 2 million Swiss francs (US$2.26 million at the current exchange rate) to Platini, a former captain and manager of the French national team, in February 2011 for supplementary and non-contracted salary working as a presidential adviser from 1998 to 2002.
The scandal, which emerged in 2015 when Platini was president of UEFA, ended his hopes of succeeding Blatter, who was forced out of FIFA over the affair.
“The criminal proceedings have had not only legal, but also massive personal and professional consequences for Michel Platini — although no incriminating evidence was ever presented. Among other things, the criminal proceedings prevented his election as FIFA president in 2016,” Nellen said.
Although federal court trials have twice cleared their names, Blatter’s reputation would likely always be tied to leading FIFA during corruption crises that took down a swath of senior soccer officials worldwide.
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