This is a new procedural twist in the Platini-Blatter affair. Released at first instance by the Federal Criminal Court in July 2022, like the former president of the International Football Federation (FIFA) Sepp Blatter, in the so-called “payment of 2 million Swiss francs” case ( 2.03 million euros), Michel Platini won a round: on March 15, he obtained from the Swiss Federal Court of Lausanne, the challenge of the judges of the court of appeal of the Swiss Federal Criminal Court (TPF) of Bellinzona , called to retry him in a second trial, as learned The world.
While the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Confederation (MPC) and FIFA appealed the acquittal of the charges of “fraud, unfair management, breach of trust and forgery in titles” of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the former president French of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) had filed a request to obtain the recusal of the TPF court of appeal. And this to the extent that its president, Olivier Thormann, is the magistrate behind the opening of the criminal procedure initiated by the MPC in 2015 against the two former leaders of world football.
If he had not won his case initially before an extraordinary court, Michel Platini thus obtained, in the context of a second appeal before the Federal Court, the recusal of all the judges of the court appeal of the TPF. To support its judgment in favor of the Frenchman, the authority recalls that Olivier Thormann “ was heard as a witness during the first instance trial against MM. Blatter and Platini.
In June 2022, the judges heard Mr. Thormann on what constitutes the salt of this protracted political-judicial saga: the circumstances in which the MPC learned, in the spring of 2015, of the alleged unfair payment of 2 million Swiss francs made in February 2011 by Mr. Blatter to Mr. Platini, when the former number 10 of the Blues was a candidate to succeed the FIFA boss.
“A payment that required a special explanation”
According to Mr. Thormann, it was the former financial director of FIFA Markus Kattner who allegedly “gave the information”, on May 27, 2015, during a search of FIFA headquarters in Zurich. That day, Mr. Kattner allegedly gave him a ” list “ payments made to members of the FIFA executive committee in 2010. “He told me that there was a payment there that required special explanation, with a figure that attracted attention compared to the others,” declared Olivier Thormann, who opened the investigation into this payment and did not record this exchange with Markus Kattner in the criminal file.
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