the most important thing about the Blatter and Platini case

The latest developments

Why is?

The eagerly awaited main hearing against Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini began on Wednesday (June 8) in Bellinzona before the Federal Criminal Court. The two former top football officials have to answer in court in connection with a fee of around two million francs on suspicion of fraud and forgery.
An overview of the process: Joseph Blatter is caught in the web of his own criminal complaint.

What are Blatter and Platini specifically accused of?

The federal prosecutor accuses the two accused of fraud and forgery. Blatter and Platini are said to have deceived Fifa in connection with a bill for Platini’s consulting work. Specifically, it is about a bill for two million francs that the then Uefa President Platini submitted in 2010 and the then Fifa President Blatter unlawfully confirmed. According to the indictment, the sole purpose of the payment was to accumulate Platini’s fortune.

According to the federal prosecutor’s indictment, the bill is based on false information. Although Platini had already received annual fees of 300,000 francs between 1998 and 2002, an additional sum of 2 million francs was paid by Fifa without hesitation in 2011 – including 229,126 francs in social security contributions.

What is the role of FIFA?

Fifa is acting as a private prosecutor. The world football association wants to get back the two million Swiss francs. The current Fifa President, Gianni Infantino, will not appear as a witness in the ongoing proceedings.

At the start of the trial, the defense attorneys for the two accused, Blatter and Platini, tried to force FIFA out of the proceedings as a private prosecutor. They argued that world football’s governing body was not entitled to be a party in the ongoing criminal proceedings. Fifa lacks a legally permissible internal resolution to act as a victim. However, the Federal Criminal Court decided to allow FIFA as a private plaintiff.

What is the role of the Attorney General?

The process also plays a crucial role in the judicial affair involving the Swiss Attorney General (BA) in recent years. It is about the mysterious closeness between Fifa President Gianni Infantino and BA boss Michael Lauber, who has since resigned.

The case is still under investigation. It is also about the suspicion that after a raid on Fifa in the spring of 2015, Fifa sent a discreet tip to the Bern public prosecutor’s office. This let the two-million payment fly. The investigations of the federal prosecutor subsequently prevented Platini from becoming head of Fifa, as originally planned. This paved the way for Infantino to the top.

Because of these meetings, extraordinary federal prosecutors are investigating the role of former Swiss federal prosecutor Michael Lauber, as well as Infantino and other suspects. One of these suspects was summoned to provide information in the Blatter-Platini trial on Thursday. He later had to resign because he was accused of having too close contacts with the head of FIFA’s legal department.

Whether Infantino and the federal prosecutor’s office successfully joined forces in 2015 to prevent Platini’s election as Fifa president is disputed. The legal representative of world football’s governing body described this alleged intrigue in court as a “conspiracy theory”. Fifa boss Infantino had always rejected the allegation of collusion.

How is the process?

A total of eleven days of negotiations are scheduled until June 22nd. A verdict is expected to be announced on July 8. The days of the meetings are scheduled between 9:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. – with a view to Blatter’s health.

What did Blatter say when he was questioned?

Blatter said he was surprised the case was going to court at all. It is a purely private matter of good friends in a club, which is Fifa. When he asked Platini to work with him in 1998, he said he was worth a million a year. Because Fifa was financially strapped at the time – it was almost broke in 2002 – you could only pay him 300,000 francs a year. He does not know why Platini only issued a subsequent bill of two million francs many years later. Blatter said he had been convicted for the incident for seven years since federal prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against him in 2015. That feels like an eternity. The media had prejudiced him for a long time, but he was now happy that the case was finally going to court and that the truth could be found out. Blatter did not answer an additional question from Fifa’s legal representative in protest at their behavior in recent years.

And what did Platini say?

Platini described how he was asked by Blatter in 1998 to support him for the presidential campaign. After a period of reflection, he suggested that he be available as a technical advisor for Fifa. When Blatter asked him about the fee, he said he wanted a million. He can choose the currency: rubles, marks or whatever. When asked by the court presidency, Platini said money was not an issue for him. Ever since he was 17, he has always earned very well from football. Blatter then said to him, okay, let’s do one million Swiss francs. The fact that he was only paid 300,000 francs was not an issue for him. Only many years later, when two resigning Fifa officials were paid millions, did he remind Fifa of the difference. The fact that he finally billed for 2 million and not 2.8 million francs, which he was actually entitled to according to his bill, is typical of him. He must have had the wrong numbers in his head.

What did Olivier Thormann say?

The interrogation of Olivier Thormann, who opened criminal proceedings against Joseph Blatter in 2015, was eagerly awaited. Surprisingly, when questioned in court on Thursday (June 9), he named former Fifa chief financial officer Markus Kattner as the informant who drew the public prosecutor’s attention to the 2 million payment. The reference was made as part of a so-called accompanied edition, which was carried out on May 27, 2015 at Fifa’s headquarters in Zurich. That was the day when several Fifa officials were arrested early in the morning at the Hotel Baur au Lac. Actually, the federal prosecutor was looking for indications of possible bribes in connection with the World Cup awards to Russia and Qatar. According to Thormann’s testimony, Kattner gave him a fact sheet at the time showing the conspicuous payment in February 2011. This lead was followed, and during another house search on September 25, 2015, Platini’s account was found in Blatter’s office. According to Blatter, he had kept the incriminating document in his desk and handed it over to the investigators of his own accord.

The court reacted immediately to Thormann’s statements and offered Kattner as an additional witness. He is to be interrogated next Tuesday (June 14).