The fallout from the case ousted Blatter ahead of schedule
as president of FIFA and ended Platini’s campaign to succeed his former mentor.
It also removed Platini as president of UEFA, the governing body of European
soccer.
In 2015, federal prosecutors in Switzerland revealed their
investigation into a $2 million payment from FIFA to Platini from four years
earlier. The pair will go on trial in Bellinzona.
The subsidiary charges include forgery of the invoice in
2011 that allowed Blatter to authorize FIFA to pay the 2 million Swiss francs
(about $2 million) Platini had asked for. The claim was for the former France
soccer great to be paid extra money for being an advisor — without having a
contract for it — in Blatter’s first presidential term from 1998-2002.
Both have long denied wrongdoing and claim they had a verbal
deal in 1998. That defense first failed with judges at the FIFA ethics
committee, which banned them from soccer, and later in separate appeals at the
Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Now the case comes to a criminal court which will sit only
until lunchtime each day because of the 86-year-old Blatter’s health, 18 months
after he was in a coma following heart surgery.
Blatter is due to be questioned Wednesday and Platini one
day later. Both are expected to give closing statements on June 22, when the
trial ends.
The three federal judges hearing the case are scheduled to
deliver their verdict on July 8. Blatter and Platini each face of up to five
years in prison, but suspended sentences are a likely option.
Blatter said in a statement everything was accounted for
properly and he is optimistic about his chances at the trial. Platini denounced
what he called “unfounded and unfair accusations.” He has claimed the
allegations were fed to prosecutors in a plot to stop him from becoming FIFA
president.
Arguments and evidence in court will revisit the widely
discredited FIFA political culture during Blatter’s 17-year presidency, and
around the time Qatar controversially won the hosting rights to this year’s
World Cup.
Platini sent his invoice to FIFA in January 2011, only weeks
after the World Cup vote. It was quickly paid as Blatter’s next re-election
campaign took shape.
Qatar’s top soccer official, Mohamed bin Hammam, used the
momentum of his nation’s rising status in a failed challenge to Blatter.
Platini was seen as both Blatter’s presumed heir, likely in 2015, and a key
ally Bin Hammam needed to win European votes.
In the published indictment, Swiss prosecutors do not cite
FIFA politics as a motive for payment. They focus on the facts of Platini being
enriched by an allegedly unlawful salary claim and a further 229,000 Swiss
francs ($238,000) of social security taxes paid by FIFA in Zurich.
The Platini money was “accounted for accordingly and approved
by all responsible FIFA authorities,” Blatter said in a statement. That view is
disputed by a former employee, however.
The additional money was never accrued as it should have
been in FIFA accounts from 1999, according to then-FIFA accountant Jeannine
Erni, who was interviewed for different investigations. She said the payment
was “odd” and looked related to the 2011 presidential election.
Another former staffer, then-FIFA head of compliance Ivo
Bischofsberger, said in questioning cited by CAS that he “always had doubts
about the whole story. Did it smell? Yes.”
Platini’s contract with FIFA, signed in August 1999, was for
300,000 Swiss francs ($312,000) annually. Platini said he asked for “1 million”
but Blatter would pay only the same as FIFA’s then-secretary general and
promised the balance later.
Platini’s contract expired in 2002, when he was elected to
the FIFA executive committee. A letter to him, signed by Blatter in September
2002 and seen by The Associated Press, said their agreement was settled and
terminated.
Platini testified at CAS he first asked for extra money
early in 2010 after FIFA paid a seven-figure severance to Jerome Champagne, a
French former diplomat who was ousted as a Blatter aide. The invoice eventually
requested 500,000 Swiss francs ($520,000) extra for each year of advisory work.
Witnesses due in court include two former elected FIFA and
UEFA officials, Ángel María Villar of Spain and Antonio Mattarese of Italy, and
former federal prosecutor Olivier Thormann, who was cleared in 2018 of
misconduct in the FIFA investigation.
Thormann will be questioned Thursday as Platini’s lawyers
try to show the prosecution office colluded with soccer officials, and helped
Gianni Infantino become FIFA president in 2016.
Attempts to summon Infantino to be questioned in court have
failed. Platini has also filed a criminal complaint in France against
Infantino, his former general secretary at UEFA.
Platini and Blatter have both questioned how prosecutors
learned about the disputed payment.
Swiss prosecutors began investigating FIFA in November 2014
when the soccer body filed a criminal complaint about suspected money
laundering in bid contests to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Russia and
Qatar won those votes by the FIFA executive committee in December 2010.
Swiss authorities seized documents and data at FIFA
headquarters on May 27, 2015 — the day soccer officials were arrested in Zurich
hotels in a separate, sprawling American investigation of corruption.
Three weeks later, then-attorney general Michael Lauber said
53 suspect transactions possibly linked to World Cup bidding had been alerted
by banks in Switzerland.
More than 11 years after Platini was paid, FIFA is trying to
recover the money.
“FIFA has brought a civil action against both Blatter and
Platini to have the money which was illegally misappropriated repaid to FIFA,”
the soccer body’s lawyer, Catherine Hohl-Chirazi, said in a statement, “so it
can be used for the sole purpose for which it was originally intended —
football.”