Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter and former UEFA chief Michel Platini were both acquitted of corruption charges by a Swiss court on Tuesday.
The charges had related to fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of 2 million Swiss francs (now €2.1 million; $2.26 million) of FIFA money in 2011.
The two had previously been acquitted by a lower court in 2022, but Swiss prosecutors appealed that decision.
“After two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must realize that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed,” Platini’s lawyer Dominic Nellen said in a statement on Tuesday. “Michel Platini must finally be left in peace in criminal matters.”
What was the case about?
The corruption case related to payment of 2 million Swiss francs that Blatter authorized to Platini — a former French soccer star and former captain of the national team — in 2011.
The two men said the payment was a consultancy fee paid to Platini for work carried out between 1998 and 2002.
They said the payment had been partly deferred because FIFA lacked the funds to pay Platini in full at the time. They also said the agreement was made orally and with no witnesses.
Platini claimed the debt in 2011. Prosecutors later argued that this was an “unfounded” payment obtained by “cleverly misleading” FIFA’s internal controls through false statements.
The scandal was made public in 2015, forcing Blatter to step down as FIFA president — a role he had held since 1998. It also prompted Michel to quit as UEFA president, and scuttled his prospects of succeeding Blatter in FIFA.
Blatter, who is now 89, and Platini, 69, have consistently denied wrongdoing in a decade-long corruption case.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
