Blatter and Platini pleaded not guilty in fraud trial: they targeted FIFA and talked about an old deal

Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini they reiterated their innocence with emphasis this Thursday during the second day of the trial they were charged with fraud, unfair management, breach of trust and forgery of documents. Both have dismissed all charges against them and complained of the suffering they have caused since the investigation began in 2015. Furthermore, the former FIFA president assured that the payment they are accused for was a “paycheck” which they had previously agreed.

Blatter was supposed to testify on the first day of Wednesday, but the Swiss complained of chest pains and asked for an answer the following morning. “I feel much better, thank you,” said the 86-year-old Swiss at the start of Thursday’s session at the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona.

Blatter had been FIFA president for 17 years when he resigned in June 2015 due to a corruption scandal.. A few months later, Swiss federal prosecutors revealed an investigation into FIFA’s $ 2 million payment to Platini four years earlier, resulting in his removal from office as president of UEFA, the governing body of European football.

Both deny any wrongdoing and also question how the controversial payment came to light, with baseless allegations that prosecutors met an informant on a park bench. This was denied by the last witness, former federal prosecutor Olivier Thormann.

Blatter and Platini claim they reached a verbal agreement in 1998 for the money. That defense failed before the FIFA ethics committee judges, who banned them from sport, and then appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Platini’s contract with FIFA, signed in August 1999, provided for the payment of 300,000 Swiss francs ($ 312,000) annually with retroactive effect to January.. It is assured that Blatter promised to pay him as the then general secretary, and promised to make the payment later. “In the verbal agreement we have not established the date to receive it, fIt was a gentleman’s contract and we started right away. I didn’t give him a specific date to give it to him, “Blatter said.

“When he was elected president of FIFA, the accounts were wrong … At that time I had no idea (when the payment would be made). I only had this employee with me and I had to pay him this million, but I didn’t know when and how would you have received it? Platini approved what Blatter said in his testimony.

The former star assured that he should have received higher pay, but miscalculated the discrepancy in the amount he was promised and his salary during his four years as a consultant.

“I made a mistake,” Platini said. “I was convinced that the salary was $ 500,000 and I realized it when the prosecutor showed me the contract. But FIFA knew they cheated me.”

Platini was asked to explain why it wasn’t until 2011 that he sent an invoice to FIFA with the money allegedly owed. The bill wasn’t long in coming after FIFA shelled out a seven-figure severance package to Jerome Champagne, a former French diplomat who was fired as Blatter’s aide.

“I trusted the president and I knew that one day he would pay me. I did not accept an agreement with the president without trusting him. Money was not something vital to me. What was essential was the word of the president of FIFA”, Platini explained. .

The trial is expected to last 11 days and the three federal judges in charge of the case are expected to issue a verdict on July 8. Blatter and Platini are both exposed to five years in prisonbut they will most likely receive a suspended sentence.

“I was shocked and that shock lasted seven years. There it is. I was grounded for seven years. It seems like an eternity,” Blatter complained, adding, “That’s why I’m happy to be in court now, to find out the truth about what happened. I’m happy to be here and that all this will finally end. “

Blatter and Platini refused to answer questions from FIFA lawyer Catherine Hohl-Chirazi.

“What FIFA did to the FIFA president and to me is scandalous. They turned us into scammers, swindlers, money launderers. All so that he couldn’t be president,” complained Platini.

The criminal trial against Blatter began in September 2015 and only years later, after Thormann left the prosecution, was Platini investigated.

Platini’s attorney Dominic Nellen tried to prove in court that the prosecution collaborated with football officials, allowing Gianni Infantino to take over the presidency of FIFA in 2016. The FIFA Ethics Committee’s investigation into the payment of 2 million led to the punishment of Platini, with which he could not present his candidacy in the elections to replace Blatter.

However, Thormann said Platini’s payment information was received in May 2015 from Markus Kattner, FIFA’s then chief financial officer. Swiss authorities had seized documents and other information at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich as part of a broader investigation and during the investigation by US federal agents into corruption in football.

The documents detailed FIFA’s payments to all members of its executive committee, including Platini: “We have received a notice and we have opened a dossier,” Thormann told the court, ruling out any idea of ​​a conspiracy.