Blatter and Platini, a former France national team captain
who was president of European governing body UEFA, faced sentences of up to
five years for financial wrongdoing but actual jail time was considered to be
unlikely ahead of their 11-day trial. Verdicts are expected on July 8.
The 86-year-old Blatter’s legal jeopardy increased Wednesday
when prosecutors in FIFA’s home city Zurich confirmed to The Associated Press
they had opened criminal proceedings against him in a separate complaint filed
by soccer’s world body in 2020.
Blatter and his longtime right-hand man, former FIFA
secretary general Jérôme Valcke, are now formal suspects in an investigation of
alleged mismanagement relating to the FIFA World Football Museum project in
central Zurich. The new details were first reported by a Swiss financial news
website.
Earlier Wednesday at the Swiss federal criminal court in
Bellinzona, prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand also asked the three judges for Platini
to pay FIFA more than 2.2 million Swiss francs ($2.2 million) in compensation.
Blatter and Platini deny fraud and lesser charges relating
to a FIFA-approved $2 million payment to the France great in 2011. At the time,
Platini was UEFA president, a FIFA vice president and was expected to succeed
Blatter, likely in 2015.
Platini said in a statement published after the court
session that he was “serene and confident.”
“The indictment of the prosecutor today is devoid of any
basis,” Platini said. “The debates of the trial proved that this criminal
procedure had no reason to exist.”
The prosecution argued there was no legal or contractual
basis for FIFA to pay Platini’s invoice for working as a presidential adviser
in Blatter’s first term between 1998 and 2002. FIFA also paid $229,000 of
social security taxes in Zurich.
Both have long denied wrongdoing and claim they had a verbal
deal in 1998 for Platini to get extra salary that FIFA could not pay at the
time. Platini signed a contract in August 1999 to be paid 300,000 Swiss francs
($300,000) annually.
Their defense previously failed at the FIFA ethics
committee, which banned them from soccer and removed them from office, the FIFA
appeals committee, and later in separate appeals at the Court of Arbitration
for Sport.
Blatter has said FIFA accounted for the money properly, and
Platini has claimed the allegation came to light in September 2015 to block him
from campaigning to be FIFA president.
In June 2015, Blatter announced his plan to resign early as
president in fallout from a sprawling American corruption investigation. A
separate but cooperating case by Swiss prosecutors led to the Platini payment
being investigated.
Blatter and Platini testified last week and both are
expected to make closing statements at the end of the trial on June 22.
Two federal criminal proceedings and one at canton (state)
level are now ongoing against Blatter and also Valcke.
FIFA asked Zurich prosecutors to look at the $140 million
renovation of a downtown Zurich building for a museum long seen as a pet
project of Blatter that opened in 2016. The loss-making museum is tied to a
longterm FIFA rental of apartments and offices on the site owned by insurance
firm Swiss Life.
Lawyers for Blatter said 18 months ago the museum
allegations are “baseless and are vehemently denied.”
Federal prosecutors including Hildbrand are also
investigating a FIFA loan of $1 million in 2010 to the Trinidad and Tobago
soccer federation. The suspects are Blatter, Valcke and former FIFA finance
director Markus Kattner, who testified in court Tuesday about the Platini
payment.
The loan was later waived and effectively gifted soccer
money to Jack Warner, then a FIFA vice president, weeks before he was a
candidate in the Caribbean islands’ general election. Warner then became a
government minister.
Valcke is also awaiting a federal appeals court verdict in
Bellinzona after a retrial in March on charges linked to use of a Qatari-owned
villa in Sardinia and World Cup broadcast rights. The three defendants include
soccer and broadcast executive Nasser al-Khelaïfi, the president of French
champion Paris Saint-Germain. -AP
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