By: Kwame Bediako
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini have been acquitted of corruption charges by a Swiss court. The Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in Muttenz, near Basel, delivered the verdict, dismissing the appeal by Swiss federal prosecutors against their 2022 acquittal in a lower court.
The case centered around a payment of 2 million Swiss francs ($2.26 million) authorized by Blatter for Platini in 2011, which was deemed a consultancy fee for work carried out between 1998 and 2002. Platini maintained that part of the payment was deferred due to FIFA’s financial constraints at the time. Despite consistent denials of fraud, the scandal led to Platini’s downfall as UEFA president and derailed his ambitions to succeed Blatter as FIFA president.
Platini’s lawyer, Dominic Nellen, welcomed the ruling, stating that “after two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must realize that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed.”
The ruling comes exactly nine and a half years after a Swiss federal investigation began in September 2015, setting in motion events that ultimately ended the careers of football’s most powerful figures.
