- Blatter and Platini cleared of corruption charges
- Case involved a 2 million Swiss franc payment
- Platini’s FIFA bid blocked by legal issues
Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter and French soccer legend Michel Platini were both acquitted of corruption charges by a Swiss court on Tuesday, two and a half years after their initial acquittal on the same offenses.
The two influential figures in global soccer were cleared of fraud by the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in Muttenz, near Basel. This ruling followed an appeal by Swiss federal prosecutors against their 2022 acquittal at a lower court. Both Blatter and Platini had denied the charges.
“After two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must recognize that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed. Michel Platini must finally be left in peace in criminal matters,” said Platini’s lawyer, Dominic Nellen, in a statement.
The case involved a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.26 million) payment that Blatter authorized for Platini in 2011. The payment, intended as a consultancy fee for work Platini had done between 1998 and 2002, had been partially deferred because FIFA lacked the funds to pay him in full at the time.
The scandal, which surfaced in 2015 when Platini was president of UEFA, ended Platini’s aspirations to succeed Blatter, who was forced out of FIFA due to the controversy.
“The criminal proceedings have had not only legal but also significant personal and professional consequences for Michel Platini, despite the lack of incriminating evidence. Among other things, the proceedings prevented his election as FIFA president in 2016,” Nellen stated.
