MUTTENZ, Switzerland (AP) — Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini won again in court Tuesday and now lead 2-0 in trial verdicts against Swiss federal prosecutors.
The former FIFA president and former UEFA president were acquitted for a second time on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation of more than $2 million of FIFA money in 2011.
Blatter, now aged 89, gave little reaction listening to the verdict of three cantonal (state) judges acting as a federal criminal appeals court. Sitting in the row in front of Platini, Blatter alternately tapped his fingers and held his left hand over his mouth.
Platini sat with his arms folded or rubbing his hands as he listened to a translator sitting beside him relating the court's verdict in German into his native French.
The attorney general’s office in Switzerland had challenged a first acquittal in July 2022 and asked for sentences of 20 months, suspended for two years.
Blatter and Platini have consistently denied wrongdoing in a decade-long case that swung on their claims of a verbal agreement to one day settle the money in question.
Blatter approved FIFA paying 2 million Swiss francs (now $2.21 million) to France soccer great Platini in February 2011 for supplementary and non-contracted salary working as a presidential advisor from 1998-2002.
The latest win for Blatter and the 69-year-old Platini came exactly 9 1/2 years since the Swiss federal investigation was revealed and kicked off events that ended the careers of soccer’s most powerful men.
That September 2015 day in Zurich, police came to interrogate them at FIFA after an executive committee meeting when Platini was a strong favorite to succeed his one-time mentor in an upcoming election.
Though federal court trials have twice cleared their names, Blatter’s reputation likely always will be tied to leading FIFA during corruption crises that took down a swath of senior soccer officials worldwide.
Platini, one of soccer’s greatest players and later Blatter’s protégé in soccer politics, never did get the FIFA presidency he often called his destiny.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press
