Swiss prosecutors accuse former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini of unlawfully arranging a fee of $2 million in 2011
Swiss prosecutors accuse former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini of unlawfully arranging a fee of $2 million in 2011
The trial of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and French footballing legend Michel Platini over alleged corrupt funds started in Switzerland on Wednesday with each defendants in a assured temper.
Swiss prosecutors accuse the pair, as soon as among the many sport’s strongest figures, of unlawfully arranging a fee of two million Swiss francs ($2.08 million) in 2011. Blatter and Platini deny the costs.
Three judges on the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona, will hear the case within the trial which runs till June 22. A verdict is due on July 8. If convicted, Platini and Blatter resist 5 years in jail.
Both have denied wrongdoing and say that they had a verbal settlement over the fee, which associated to consultancy work by Platini between 1998 and 2002.
Blatter, Platini assured
Mr. Blatter, as soon as essentially the most highly effective determine in international soccer, arrived on the court docket trying frail and accompanied by his daughter Corinne and his lawyer.
“I am absolutely confident, the sun is shining.. and I’m in a good mood,” Mr. Blatter informed journalists earlier than the listening to. “I know I have not done anything against the law. My life was football, for 45 years with FIFA. My life is football.”
Mr. Platini, a former UEFA President, additionally mentioned he was assured, and joked he must take course in German so he may comply with the proceedings.
“I am convinced that justice will be fully and definitively done to me after so many years of wild accusations and slander,” he mentioned in assertion earlier than the trial started.
“We will prove in court that I acted with the utmost honesty, that the payment of the remaining salary was due to me by FIFA and is perfectly legal.”
Accused of fraud
The Swiss Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has accused Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini of “fraud, in the alternative of misappropriation, in the further alternative of criminal mismanagement as well as of forgery of a document.
Mr. Platini, the former UEFA president who as a player captained France to victory in the 1984 European Championship, was also charged as an accomplice.
Mr. Blatter, 85, and Mr. Platini, 66, were both banned in 2016 from football for six years over the payment, made with Blatter’s approval for work done a decade earlier.
“FIFA has introduced a civil motion towards each Blatter and Platini to have the cash which was illegally misappropriated repaid to FIFA so it may be used for the only real objective for which it was initially meant: soccer,” mentioned FIFA’s lawyer Catherine Hohl-Chirazi.
Source: www.thehindu.com
