March 5 – The Swiss public prosecutor in the Sepp Blatter/Michel Platini fraud trial has requested suspended sentences of 20 months for the former FIFA and UEFA chiefs for allegedly cheating FIFA out of CHF2 million.
Prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand opted not to call for prison sentences for 88-year-old Blatter (pictured) and 69-year-old Platini but rejected their insistence they were innocent of any wrongdoing
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 not guilty 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.
But Hildbrand told the court on Tuesday that there was no evidence of a verbal agreement and in a three-and-a-half-hour argument set out to dispel the defendants’ assertion that they had an “oral contract” to pay Platini in 2011 for work as a consultant between 1998 and 2002.
The defendants say they had agreed a yearly sum of CHF 1 million, but that this was too much for FIFA finances at the time.
Hildbrand argued that explanation was implausible. Even if FIFA had transferred CHF 1 million to Platini in 1999, he said, it would still have had “more than CHF 21 million in cash,” and its reserves had reached CHF 328 million in 2002.
To agree such a sum without a written record, without witnesses and without ever making provision for it in the accounts was, he said, “contrary to commercial practice” as well as to FIFA’s norms.
The appeal trial, which began on Monday, is due to continue until Thursday at the latest, with closing arguments from the defence and a verdict on March 25. Although FIFA, the civil party, has joined the public prosecutor’s appeal, it is not represented in court.
Hildebrand also rejected allegations of political motives by Switzerland’s Attorney General’s office.
“This fairy tale belongs in the category of conspiracy theories, which must be denied entry into the hallowed halls of the courts,” he said.
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