Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini won again in court Tuesday and now lead 2-0 in trial verdicts against Swiss federal prosecutors.
The former football officials were acquitted for a second time on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of more than $2 million of FIFA money in 2011.
Blatter, now 89 years old, gave little reaction listening to the verdict of three cantonal (state) judges acting as a federal criminal appeals court. Sitting in the row in front of Platini, Blatter alternately tapped his fingers and held his left hand over his mouth.
The attorney general’s office in Switzerland had challenged a first acquittal in July 2022 and asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years.
Blatter and Platini have consistently denied wrongdoing in a 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 (now $2.21 million) to France soccer great Platini in February 2011 for supplementary and non-contracted salary working as a presidential advisor from 1998-2002.
The latest win for Blatter and 69-year-old Platini came exactly 9.5 years after the Swiss federal investigation was revealed and kicked off events that ended the careers of soccer’s most powerful men.
Though federal court trials have twice cleared their names, Blatter’s reputation likely always will be tied to leading FIFA during corruption crises that took down a swath of senior soccer officials worldwide.
(Fana bc)
