March 4 – A frail-looking Sepp Blatter told the opening day of his latest fraud trial that he was not guilty of “falsehoods, lies and deception”.
The former FIFA president told the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court near Basel that he was “innocent” of the charges against him.
Blatter, who ran FIFA from 1998 to 2015, has long declared he was the victim of a witch hunt.
The seemingly never-ending saga involving him and ex-UEFA boss Michel Platini, the two men who were once the most powerful in world and European football, could finally be reaching its denouement.
The pair were acquitted in July 2022 in a criminal action brought by Swiss judicial authorities that gripped world football politics. The acquittals took place despite both having been banned from the game by FIFA, but prosecutors immediately appealed.
The not-guilty verdicts into Blatter and Platini, who courted and coveted Blatter’s job but never got it, was hugely significant in their respective bids to clear their names, but a blow too to the Swiss judicial process and to FIFA.
The verdict followed an 11-day trial at the Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland and centred around the so-called $2million “disloyal payment” from FIFA to Platini with Blatter’s approval in 2011, for work done a decade earlier.
Both men had denied wrongdoing and said the transfer was belated payment for Platini’s advisory work for Blatter, though there was no written proof of it.
Both have consistently claimed at five different judicial hearings – twice at FIFA, then the Court of Arbitration for Sport and now two federal criminal courts – that they had a verbal “gentleman’s agreement” to one day settle the unpaid salary.
Now, three years after their last appearance, they are back on trial for the second time as Swiss prosecutors pursue the case, which has dragged on for a decade.
Blatter arrived at court 10 minutes after Platini, who did not speak to reporters. Their trial is expected to last four days, with a verdict scheduled for March 25. Prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand, a veteran of FIFA investigations, has asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years.
Platini, who had worked to help Blatter get elected in 1998 and then agreed to be a presidential advisor on an annual salary of 300,000 Swiss francs, saw his ban expire in 2019 but has not returned to the sport since. Blatter is exiled until late in 2028, when he will be 92.
The indictment against Blatter and Platini states: “They falsely claimed that FIFA owed Platini, or that Platini was entitled to, the sum of two million Swiss francs for advisory work. This deception was achieved through repeated untruthful claims made by both accused parties.”
However, Blatter, who turns 89 next Monday, hit back by declaring in court: “When you talk about falsehoods, lies and deception, that’s not me. That didn’t exist in my whole life. We had principles in my family – we take only money we have earned. I am innocent.”
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