Blatter, the former head of FIFA, and Platini are back in court on corruption charges

Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter are back in court to answer to accusations of wrongdoing related to their FIFA tenure.

French football star Michel Platini and former FIFA President Sepp Blatter will appear in a Swiss court on Monday to answer to fraud accusations, two and a half years after they were found not guilty.

A lower Swiss court cleared the two, who were considered among the most influential people in world football, in 2022 after a seven-year probe into a payment of $2.22 million ($2 million) to Platini. A fresh hearing will take place at the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in Muttenz, close to Basel, as a result of the appeal of the decision by Swiss federal prosecutors.

“In October 2022, the prosecutor’s office stated that the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) had filed an appeal against the first-instance judgment and submitted a statement of appeal requesting that the judgment be set aside in full,” without going into any information.

Blatter and Platini faced accusations in 2010 and 2011 of deceiving FIFA employees on a purported duty on the part of the governing body to compensate Platini, who was then the president of UEFA.

Falsely, they asserted that Platini was entitled to or that FIFA owed him two million Swiss francs for advising services. According to the indictment, the accused individuals made repeated false statements in order to accomplish this deceit.

Platini’s plans to succeed Blatter as FIFA president were thwarted by the case. Both received original eight-year football suspensions for ethics offenses in 2015, although those suspensions were eventually lowered.

The prosecution’s assertion that the money was false was questioned by a judge in 2022, who found their claim of a “gentlemen’s agreement” to be credible.

Federal prosecutors in Switzerland are now requesting that Blatter and Platini be given a 20-month suspended sentence.

The lawsuit has been described as a witch hunt by Blatter, who oversaw FIFA for 17 years until 2015.

“The contract between Platini and me was correct, according to the Federal Criminal Court in 2022, and I expect the new court to confirm this first decision,” the 88-year-old told Reuters last week, referring to the appeal as “absolute nonsense.”

“I have no doubt that I will be cleared. “I’m an honest man,” he continued.