Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini were once a well-rehearsed team. They have long been enemies of each other and are on trial together in Bellinzona – the charge is, among other things, for forging documents.
They were once close, now they are deadly enemies: Michel Platini (left) and Joseph Blatter.
The common history of Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini goes back a long way – to a distant time when the world football association Fifa was not yet chaired by a Swiss. That was in 1998 when Platini, as co-president of the World Cup in France, was basking in the success of the home team.
14 years earlier, in 1984, Platini had already led “les bleus” as the legendary number 10 to the European title. Now he had definitely arrived in the official caste from the field. In France, like the “Kaiser” Franz Beckenbauer in Germany, Platini has an indestructible reputation – as “le roi”, the king.
Blatter, the cunning tactician
At the same time, Joseph Blatter was Secretary General of Fifa. But he sensed his chance. After a 24-year tenure, Brazilian João Havelange finally announced his resignation. The European football association Uefa soon ported its president, the Swede Lennart Johansson, as a successor candidate.
In France, Michel Platini has an indestructible reputation – as «le roi», the king.
But Uefa and Johansson didn’t reckon with Blatter: the shrewd tactician from Valais got Platini on board in 1998 and with it football glamor. He offered the French the post of sporting director, a post that had not existed in Fifa before. The tandem Blatter – Platini won the election easily.
In the following years, the two were a well-rehearsed team, together they pulled the strings in world football. For his supporting role, Platini billed Fifa for CHF 300,000 annually between 1998 and 2002, which was paid immediately. This emerges from the indictment of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, which will be heard at the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona from Wednesday. The fee payments are relevant because, many years later, on January 17, 2011, Platini billed Fifa again for precisely this consulting activity.
This time the bill came to a flat rate of 2 million Swiss francs. And in contrast to the previous payments, social security contributions of 229,126 francs were added. According to the indictment, the bill was based on both an oral and a written contract signed single-handedly by Blatter and Platini. The payment was therefore promptly initiated by Fifa and transferred to Platini’s UBS account in Nyon.
Platini has long been traded as the crown prince of Blatter
You don’t have to be a great prophet to foresee that the federal prosecutor’s office will point to a coincidence in time: four months after Platini’s bill was paid, at the beginning of June 2011, the Fifa Congress elected Blatter president for the fourth time.
The NZZ wrote of a “huge victory”. In the end, Blatter no longer had an opponent. After Mohammed bin Hammam’s resignation, Platini, now Uefa president, hastily confirmed his disinterest in running for Fifa president. And this despite the fact that he had long been traded as the “crown prince” for Blatter’s successor.
Instead, the handover should take place four years later. During his 2011 election campaign, Blatter promised unreservedly that the coming term of office would definitely be his last. But the 2015 election year turned out to be an “annus horribilis” for Fifa. The American judicial authorities and the Swiss federal prosecutor’s office opened several criminal proceedings, and leading Fifa officials were arrested at the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, which attracted media attention.
Blatter was not spared the legal hurricane
Blatter was no longer able to escape this legal hurricane. Contrary to all his earlier promises, he ran for a fifth term in office and was promptly re-elected by the Fifa Congress. But just a few days later he threw in the towel and announced his resignation. Was it finally time for Platini? In any case, for the Frenchman, who had long since broken with Blatter, the dream of the Fifa presidency seemed to be coming true after all.
One Media release from the Attorney General dated September 25, 2015 once again turned everything upside down. Criminal proceedings have been opened against the President of Fifa on suspicion of unfaithful business management and eventual embezzlement, it said. Now Blatter had to leave the stage immediately and dishonorably – and he took Platini with him. In the media release, Blatter is accused of the “illegal payment” of 2 million francs to the French.
Almost seven years later, the two are sitting in the dock together because of this allegation. They are also being accused of forging documents in connection with the jointly signed contract. So, despite being in the same boat again, Blatter and Platini are still so enmity that they avoid staying in the same five-star hotel during the trial in Ticino.
Joseph Blatter resigned shortly after being elected for a fifth term as Fifa President.
How did the federal prosecutor get the momentous information?
At least as much as the 2 million fee itself is of interest to the question of how the federal prosecutor’s office came to this far-reaching information back in 2015. Because the disputed payment is nothing more than the proverbial needle in a huge haystack of data that was secured at Fifa. Gianni Infantino also comes into focus. He was undeniably the laughing third party to benefit from the departures of Blatter and Platini. As a previously relatively unknown football official, the Valaisan was elected the new Fifa President in February 2016.
But it has not been proven that Infantino actually actively helped, as is rumored, to clear his opponents from the field. The key witness in this matter is Olivier Thormann, of all people, who in 2015 headed the department for white-collar crimes in the federal prosecutor’s office. In this function he was also responsible for the Fifa procedures; In 2015, for example, he conducted the first interrogations of Blatter and Platini.
Thormann is now working at the Federal Criminal Court. On Thursday, the second day of the hearing, he does not appear as a judge, but as a witness. As such, he should provide information on how the federal prosecutor’s office got the information with the 2 million fee.
The fact that the main hearing extends over two weeks also has to do with the fact that Blatter, who is now 86 years old and in poor health, is only able to hold court for four hours a day. Blatter is being defended by Zurich lawyer Lorenz Erni, who still has a mandate from former federal prosecutor Michael Lauber. Platini is represented by the Bernese lawyer Dominic Nellen.
The federal prosecutor’s office only wants to announce the required sentence for the two suspects in court. The opening of the verdict is scheduled for July 8th.