Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini face retrial in FIFA corruption case

By Fatma Zehra Solmaz

ISTANBUL (AA) - Former football executives Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini return to court in Switzerland on Monday for a fresh trial on fraud, forgery, and misappropriation allegations.

“I am hopeful,” former FIFA president Blatter told reporters as he walked slowly down a flight of stairs towards the court in Muttenz.

The case centers on a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.21 million) payment made to Platini, which surfaced during FIFA’s 2015 corruption scandal, during which US investigators probed football officials, and Swiss authorities arrested suspects in Zurich, seizing FIFA’s financial records.

FIFA seeks reimbursement of the payment, plus 229,000 Swiss francs ($253,000) in social charges and interest. Platini says he reported it as income and paid taxes.

Blatter and Platini face a second trial nearly three years after a panel of three federal judges acquitted them. The retrial comes nearly three years after a panel of three federal judges acquitted both Blatter and Platini.

Both were acquitted in July 2022 after an 11-day trial, but prosecutors and FIFA appealed. The retrial was delayed after Platini won a ruling to remove certain judges.

They were cleared seven years after the investigation began, but by that time, they had already been removed from their positions at FIFA and UEFA, and the case also ended Platini’s hopes of becoming FIFA president.

The new trial, which began Monday, is being heard in German by three judges from different regions in a Swiss state court acting as a federal tribunal. FIFA did not attend.

“Where is FIFA?” Platini’s lawyer, Dominic Nellen, asked, urging the judges to dismiss FIFA’s appeal and civil claim.

Federal prosecutors, in their November 2021 indictment, claimed the payment “damaged FIFA’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini.”

The fresh four-day trial is set to conclude on Thursday, with a verdict expected on March 25.

Blatter and Platini deny any wrongdoing, claiming they had a verbal agreement for Platini’s delayed payment for advising Blatter between 1998 and 2002, despite the absence of a written contract.

Prosecutors are seeking 20-month jail sentences to be suspended for two years.

Blatter and Platini have been out of football since FIFA’s ethics committee suspended them in 2015. Platini’s ban ended in 2019, while Blatter was banned again in 2021, keeping him out of football until 2028, when he will be 92.

Blatter’s extended ban is linked to accusations of awarding himself large bonuses for organizing the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.