Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been cleared of financial wrongdoing for a second time in court.
Blatter, 89, and Platini, the former president of Uefa, were acquitted by a Swiss court back in 2022 over a payment of £1.55million ($2m) made by the former to Platini. At the time, Blatter and Platini were widely considered to be two of the most influential men in football.
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The attorney general’s office in Switzerland challenged their acquittal, pushing instead for 20 month sentences, suspended for two years. But Blatter and Platini were acquitted once again on Tuesday on charges of fraud, forgery, mismanagement and misappropriation.
Platiniâs lawyer, Dominic Nellen, said in a statement: âAfter two acquittals, even the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland must realise that these criminal proceedings have definitively failed. Michel Platini must finally be left in peace in criminal matters.â
The scandal ended Platini’s hopes of succeeding Blatter as the president of Fifa; a position he was heavily touted to take.
Both he and Blatter were suspended from football activities back in 2015.
âThe criminal proceedings have had not only legal but also massive personal and professional consequences for Michel Platini â although no incriminating evidence was ever presented. Among other things, the criminal proceedings prevented his election as Fifa president in 2016,â Nellen added.
Blatter described the appeal as “absolute nonsense” to Reuters earlier this year. “The Federal Criminal Court in 2022 said the contract between Platini and me was correct, and I expect the new court will confirm this first decision,” he said.
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