Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini won again in court on Tuesday, making their record 2-0 in trials against Swiss federal prosecutors.
The former FIFA president and former UEFA president were cleared for a second time of charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement, and misappropriating over $2 million of FIFA funds in 2011.
Blatter, now 89, had a calm reaction as he listened to the verdict from three cantonal judges, who were acting as a federal criminal appeals court. He sat in front of Platini, occasionally tapping his fingers on the desk or covering his mouth with his left hand.
Platini sat with his arms folded or rubbing his hands as he listened to a translator beside him, who was translating the verdict in German into French.
The attorney general’s office in Switzerland had challenged the first acquittal in July 2022 and requested sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years. The charges stated that the payment “damaged FIFA’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini.”
“Michel Platini must finally be left in peace in criminal matters,” Platini’s lawyer, Dominic Nellen, said in a statement. “After two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must realize that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed.”
Prosecutors can still appeal to the Swiss supreme court.
A case that has lasted for over a decade, Blatter and Platini have always denied any wrongdoing. Their defense has relied on their claim that there was a verbal agreement to settle the money in question.
Blatter had authorized FIFA to pay 2 million Swiss francs (now about $2.21 million) to Platini in February 2011 as additional, non-contracted salary for his work as a presidential advisor from 1998 to 2002.
This most recent victory for Blatter and the 69-year-old Platini came exactly 9½ years after the Swiss federal investigation was revealed, which triggered events that eventually ended the careers of soccer’s most powerful figures.
On that September day in 2015 in Zurich, police came to question them at FIFA after an executive committee meeting when Platini was considered a strong candidate to succeed his former mentor in an upcoming election.
Corruption crises
Even though federal court trials have cleared their names twice, Blatter’s reputation will likely always be linked to leading FIFA during corruption crises that caused many senior soccer officials worldwide to lose their positions.
Platini, one of soccer’s greatest players and later Blatter’s protégé in soccer politics, never achieved the FIFA presidency, which he often described as his destiny.
Neither Blatter nor Platini has worked in soccer since they were suspended by the FIFA ethics committee in October 2015. They were later banned and failed to overturn these bans in separate appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2016.
Michel Platini and his lawyer Dominic Nellen arriving to the verdoct at the special court“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,” Nellen said, suggesting further legal action “against those responsible for the criminal proceedings.”
Platini’s ban ended in 2019, and Blatter received a new ban from FIFA in 2021, months before his original ban was set to end.
Blatter is banned from soccer until late in 2028—when he will be 92—due to an ethics investigation over alleged self-dealing in large management bonuses paid for successfully organizing the men’s World Cup in 2010 and 2014.
Gentleman’s agreement
The verdict was given on Tuesday in a quiet provincial courthouse where a four-day trial had been held three weeks earlier.
Blatter and Platini have told five different judicial bodies — twice at FIFA, then at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and now two Swiss federal criminal courts — that they had a verbal “gentleman’s agreement” to eventually settle the unpaid and non-contracted salary.
Platini was a well-known former captain and coach of the France national team when he helped Blatter get elected to lead FIFA in Paris on the eve of the 1998 World Cup that he organized.
The two men said Platini agreed to work as a presidential adviser for an annual salary of 300,000 Swiss francs (now $340,000) through 2002. They claim there was a verbal agreement to later receive the balance of 1 million Swiss francs for each year that FIFA could not pay at the time.
Platini began asking for the money in early 2010, pointing to the seven-figure payments made to senior Blatter aides who left FIFA, which showed the organization could afford to pay him. The payment was finally made in February 2011.
Details of the payment only became known during the crisis at FIFA in May 2015 when U.S. federal investigators revealed a large investigation into international soccer officials. Swiss authorities made early-morning arrests at hotels in Zurich before seizing FIFA’s financial and business records.
In 2015, Swiss federal prosecutors were already dealing with a criminal complaint filed by FIFA. This complaint was about suspected financial wrongdoing related to votes in December 2010 that selected Russia and Qatar as future World Cup hosts.
