Former Fifa CFO Markus Kattner denies the statement before the Federal Criminal Court that he triggered the investigation with a tip to Olivier Thormann. So far, the process has only resulted in losers.
Until his dismissal in 2016, Markus Kattner was Fifa’s chief financial officer. He says: “I have various civil proceedings against FIFA running.”
In the trial against former football officials Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini over an ominous two-million payment from Fifa to Platini, another turning point occurred on the fifth day of the hearing. In summary it can be said: In Bellinzona a process is taking place that so far has only resulted in losers. Several of those involved now look even worse than before.
Markus Kattner, Fifa’s former chief financial officer, appeared as a witness on Tuesday. There is a lot to be said about him. During his time at Fifa, the German paid out millions in bonuses – not only to others, but also to himself. After his release in 2016, he sued world football’s governing body, whose ethics committee again demanded a million-euro fine from him in 2020. Today the relationship is hopelessly broken, Kattner summed it up on Tuesday: “I have various civil proceedings against Fifa running.”
None of this was relevant to the Federal Criminal Court in the narrower sense, it was only about the events of May 27, 2015. On that day, the federal prosecutor’s office, led by Olivier Thormann, searched FIFA’s premises.
Thormann had claimed on the second day of the trial that Kattner had approached him again after handing over numerous files and had addressed the two million Swiss franc payment from Fifa to Platini in 2011 because he considered it to be particularly in need of explanation. That tip, Thormann suggested, was the origin of specific investigations that brought Platini and Blatter to court. There they currently have to answer for the same payment.
Kattner now firmly rejected Thormann’s account. He has not made any comments on individual payments, he stressed. When the files were transmitted, individual business cases were generally not discussed: “It was a handover, not a survey.” Thormann was very busy. He, Kattner, also saw no reason to go into individual salary payments: “I considered them all to be legal. There was no need to point out anything.”
Fifa chief financial officer Markus Kattner lacked a motive
The dossier that the federal prosecutor’s office received from Fifa that day may have contained a fact sheet listing Platini’s remuneration. There were such fact sheets for all members of the Fifa Executive Committee in order to be able to prove the withholding tax payments to the authorities. Platini’s paper mentioned a bonus of $2,200,000 in 2011, the total compensation added up to $2,311,111.
The sum is eye-catching; in other years, Platini had received only $150,000 to $300,000 from Fifa. But the fact sheet does not contain any information about the background to the payment, especially not that Blatter is said to have approved it through official channels. The federal prosecutor’s office must have received further information. Otherwise she would not have been able to open criminal proceedings.
It is puzzling why Thormann tried to cast suspicion on Kattner of all people. This would have been an unwilling traitor. The former chief financial officer still has a friendly relationship with Blatter, as he openly explained in court. Kattner had no plausible motive to incriminate the Fifa president.
Thormann wanted to end the debate that had been smoldering for years as to whether the federal prosecutor’s office was using fairer methods with his portrayal of a liberating blow. Instead, he scored an own goal.
Now he is threatened with legal trouble. Platini’s lawyer Dominic Nellen announced that he would file a criminal complaint against the former head of the federal prosecutor’s office. “From my point of view it is clear that Thormann lied in court,” said Nellen. He also clearly violated official secrecy.
Thormann is the most obvious loser of the day, but Nellen also suffered setbacks. According to Kattner, he launched a verbal sweeping attack and demanded that numerous additional protagonists be heard as witnesses, including Gianni Infantino and former federal prosecutor Michael Lauber. Court President Joséphine Contu Albrizio consulted with her colleagues for more than an hour before declining to be questioned further.
The court could also have made itself vulnerable with the decision. With Kattner’s summons, it still gave the impression of wanting to get to the bottom of the question of who gave the federal prosecutor the decisive tip. In order to get closer to this goal, it would be logical to ask the former Fifa chief lawyer Marco Villiger, for example. Instead, Contu Albrizio said: “The court considers itself sufficiently informed to reach a verdict.”
The lawyers for the defendants Blatter and Platini could see the omission of the obvious questioning of witnesses as an opportunity to appeal after a verdict that was unfavorable for their clients.
Who was the tipster? The question remains open
Last but not least, protagonists who aren’t even litigants also look bad. Parts of Fifa President Infantino’s environment interpreted Thormann’s statement in the last few days as absolute truth. But the question of how the process that is currently gripping the football world was made possible in the first place remains unanswered.
After Thormann’s possible false testimony, the question of what happened on July 8, 2015, a few weeks after the house search at Fifa, is at least as important as before. On that day, Rinaldo Arnold, a confidant of Infantino’s from their Valais homeland, met the federal prosecutor at the time, Michael Lauber, and his spokesman, André Marty. The participants then gave different statements about the content of the meeting.
Infantino benefited from the abrupt career end of Blatter and Platini after the opening of criminal proceedings, which followed shortly thereafter. There is no evidence that anyone on his behalf helped investigators with a clue to the jumps – any guesses are no more than speculation. But the question of who might have done it instead remains unsettled.