March 25 – Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were again acquitted of corruption charges on Tuesday, after Swiss prosecutors appealed a previous ruling that cleared them over a payment of two million Swiss francs in 2011.
Former FIFA president Blatter (pictured left) and ex-UEFA president Platini (pictured right) prevailed once more after the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in the town of Muttenz, near Basel, cleared the pair for a second time on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of those two million Swiss francs.
The Swiss prosecutors had requested a suspended sentence of 20 months for both former powerbrokers, but the pair always maintained their innocence over the “disloyal payment” from FIFA to Platini with Blatter’s approval in 2011, for work done a decade earlier. The two men explained the payment as a consultancy fee paid to Platini for work carried out between 1998 and 2002.
“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 2022 the pair were acquitted in a criminal action brought by Swiss judicial authorities that gripped football politics. The acquittals took place despite both having been banned from the game by FIFA, but prosecutors immediately appealed.
The scandal first erupted in 2015 and left Platini without hope of succeeding Blatter at the helm of FIFA. Blatter also stepped down as president of the organisation. FIFA banned the pair from the game for eight years, but those bans were later reduced.
“You have seen my daughter was coming with tears because she believed in [her] father and I believed in myself,” Blatter told The Guardian. “To wait such a long time affects the person and my family was very much affected.”
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