There was an unfinished business in the FIFA and the 11-day trial against Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini, former directors of FIFA and of the UEFA, on charges of defrauding the highest governing authority in world soccer. The appointment will begin on Wednesday, with which the epic fall of the former world soccer leaders to criminal courts would finally be consummated.
It is the highest point since the separation of Blatter and Platini from their positions as presidents of FIFA and UEFA, respectively, in 2015. Now, after almost seven years of investigations, they are summoned for the confirmation of the verdict, which will be given by part of three federal judges in Switzerland on July 8.
In 2015, Swiss federal prosecutors revealed their investigation into a $2 million payment from the FIFA to Platini four years earlier. The subsidiary’s charges include forging the invoice in 2011 that allowed Blatter to authorize FIFA to pay the two million Swiss francs (about $2 million) that Platini had requested.
The claim was that the former French soccer figure would receive extra money for being an adviser, without having a contract to do so, in Sepp Blatter’s first presidential term between 1998 and 2002.
Both have long denied wrongdoing, claiming they had a verbal deal in 1998. That defense first failed with ethics committee judges at the FIFAwhich banned them from participating in any kind of directions within football and then in separate appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Now the case comes to a criminal court that will sit alone until lunchtime every day due to the health of Swiss Sepp Blatter, who is currently 86 and overcoming 18 months after being in a coma following heart surgery. .
Blatter is to be questioned on Wednesday, June 8, and Platini a day later (Thursday, June 9). Both are expected to give their final statements on June 22, when the trial ends.
The three federal judges hearing the case are scheduled to deliver their verdict on July 8. Both the Swiss and Frenchman face up to five years in prison each as the maximum punishment should the July 8 verdict find them guilty, although suspended sentences are a likely option.
Blatter said in a statement that everything was accounted for correctly and that he is optimistic about his chances at trial. Platini, for his part, denounced what he described as “unfounded and unjust accusations.” The former footballer has also claimed that the accusations were sent to prosecutors in a plot to prevent him from becoming president of the FIFA.
The arguments and evidence in court will revisit the widely discredited political culture of FIFA during Blatter’s 17-year presidency and furthermore at a time when the territory of qatar controversially won the hosting rights to this year’s World Cup.
Platini sent his bill to FIFA in January 2011, just weeks after the World Cup vote. He quickly paid for himself as Blatter’s next re-election campaign took shape. The main soccer official of qatarMohamed bin Hammam harnessed the momentum of his nation’s rising status in an unsuccessful challenge to Blatter. Platini was seen as Blatter’s heir presumptive, likely in 2015, and a key ally that bin Hammam needed to win European votes.
In the published indictment, Swiss prosecutors do not cite FIFA policy as a reason for the payment. They focus on the facts that Platini enriched himself from an allegedly illegal salary claim and another 229,000 Swiss francs (about $238,000) of social security taxes paid by FIFA in Zurich.
Platini’s money was “accounted for accordingly and approved by all responsible FIFA authorities,” Blatter said in a statement. However, that opinion is disputed by a former employee.
Swiss prosecutors began investigating the FIFA in November 2014 when the agency filed a criminal complaint on suspicion of money laundering in the bid contests to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Russia and Qatar they won those votes from 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 and extensive US investigation into corruption.
Three weeks later, then-Attorney General Michael Lauber said that banks in Switzerland had flagged 53 suspicious transactions possibly linked to the World Cup bid. More than 11 years after Platini was paid, FIFA is trying to recover the money.
“FIFA has brought a civil action against Blatter and Platini to have the money that was illegally embezzled returned to FIFA,” the agency’s lawyer, Catherine Hohl-Chirazi, said in a statement, “so that it can be used for the sole purpose for which it was originally intended: football.