GENEVA (AP) — One week before his 89th birthday, former FIFA president Sepp Blatter returns to court Monday for a retrial in a case of alleged financial wrongdoing that has run for nearly 10 years.
Blatter and French soccer great Michel Platini were acquitted in July 2022 by three federal judges on charges including fraud, forgery, misappropriation of funds and mismanagement. They related to a FIFA payment of 2 million Swiss francs (now $2.21 million) to Platini.
The acquittal came nearly seven years after the investigation was first revealed and removed them from office as leaders of FIFA and European soccer body UEFA. It also ended Platini’s campaign to succeed his one-time mentor as FIFA president.
The Swiss attorney general’s office appealed against the first verdicts in October 2022 and a fresh trial opens Monday in Muttenz, near Basel.
A verdict from three judges is scheduled on March 25.
Blatter and Platini have consistently denied wrongdoing. They claim they had a verbal agreement to eventually pay for non-contracted work advising Blatter during his first presidential term from 1998 to 2002.
Federal prosecutors have asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years.
The heart of the case
Blatter was FIFA president in 2011 when he authorized paying Platini, then a FIFA vice president leading UEFA and his expected successor.
Details of the payment made in February 2011 emerged four years later in fallout from the corruption crisis that hit FIFA in May 2015. United States federal investigators unsealed a sweeping investigation of international soccer officials. Swiss authorities made early-morning arrests at hotels in Zurich before seizing FIFA financial and business records.
The Blatter-Platini case upended the expected line of succession at FIFA, where the heads of its then-independent ethics committee suspended and later banned both men.
Blatter was ousted from office ahead of schedule and Platini was removed both from UEFA and as the favored candidate in a FIFA presidential election held in February 2016. That was won by Gianni Infantino, who had been Platini’s CEO-like general secretary at UEFA.
Once the two most influential men in world soccer, Blatter and Platini return to court aged 88 and 69, respectively, having not worked in the sport since 2015.
The New Trial
The case is scheduled for four days through Thursday, with reserve days available March 11-12. That leaves Monday March 10, Blatter’s 89th birthday, clear.
The verdict from three cantonal (state) judges sitting as a federal court is due on March 25.
The trial is being held in a cantonal (state) courthouse in Muttenz, in the suburbs of Basel, instead of the federal criminal court at Bellinzona where the first trial was held over 11 days in June 2022.
That is because Platini won a federal ruling last year ordering the recusal of appeals judges in Bellinzona.
The Payment
Platini campaigned to help get Blatter elected in Paris in 1998 and then worked as an advisor. His annual salary was 300,000 Swiss francs (now $332,000) until Blatter’s re-election in 2002. They claim there was a “gentleman’s agreement” to later get the balance of 1 million Swiss francs for each year that FIFA could not pay at the time.
The indictment published by federal prosecutors said Platini, elected UEFA president in 2007, started asking for his extra money early in 2010. Platini testified at other hearings he was motivated to ask when learning of “golden parachute” payments FIFA gave other staffers who left.
Platini sent FIFA an invoice for 2 million Swiss francs in January 2011, and was paid on Feb. 1. That was several weeks after he and other FIFA executive committee members voted for Russia and Qatar to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, respectively.
Those hosting decisions were under investigation by Swiss federal prosecutors since November 2014 when FIFA filed a criminal complaint about possible financial wrongdoing.
“This payment damaged FIFA’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini,” federal prosecutors said, publishing their initial indictment in November 2021.
Platini has said he declared the income and paid taxes on it. FIFA has pursued a civil case to recover the money and 229,000 Swiss francs ($253,000) in social charges, plus interest.
The latest court venue
The case went through several sports and civil courts before Blatter and Platini finally got a win at the federal criminal court in Bellinzona.
They lost at FIFA’s ethics committee then its appeals committee in Zurich, and in separate appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.
Platini also pursued appeals at the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Lausanne, against FIFA, and then at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. That appeal known as Platini vs. Switzerland was judged in March 2020 as inadmissible and “manifestly ill-founded.”
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