Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been found not guilty of fraud at Switzerland’s Federal Court following a two-week trial centred on a £1.6m payment made to the latter in 2011.
The former heads of FIFA and UEFA learnt of their fate via a verdict announced on Friday morning by the three judges who presided over last month’s trial. Despite being cleared, Blatter, 86, remains banned from football until 2028 for a different punishment in 2021. Platini, 67, has served his ban.
The Swiss Office of the Attorney General (OAG) had accused Blatter and Platini of "fraud, in the alternative of misappropriation, in the further alternative of criminal mismanagement as well as of forgery of a document."
Both men had denied the charges and after the verdict Platini said he would go after the "culprits" who sought to end his time as one of the game's prime administrators. It was widely believed that he had been lined up to succeed Blatter as FIFA president. "Let them count on me, we will meet again," Platini said this morning. "Because I will not give up and I will go all the way in my quest for truth."
He added: "I want to express my happiness for all my loved ones that justice has finally been done after seven years of lies and manipulation. My fight is a fight against injustice. I won a first game."
Upon arriving at the court, Blatter told journalists: "I am not innocent in my life but in this case I am innocent." After the verdict he said: "I'm not speaking about FIFA, I'm not speaking about corruption, I'm speaking about me. I have done nothing wrong. I am clean with my conscious, I am clean in my spirit."
During the trial Blatter described a £1.6m cash transfer made to Platini as a “gentleman’s agreement” for the work the former France midfielder had carried out as an advisor to the FIFA president between 1998 and 2002.
Platini asked to be paid one million francs (£816,000) per year but Blatter said that the global governing body could not afford that salary. Instead the three-times Ballon d’Or winner signed a contract for 300,000 francs a year and, according to Blatter, they had a verbal agreement to pay the rest of the money at a later date. His advisory role ended in 2002.
There was no mention of an additional payment in the signed contract.
"I knew when we started with Michel Platini that [300,000] is not the total, and we would look at it later," Blatter said when giving evidence, adding that they shook hands on a later payment. "It was an agreement between two sportsmen. I found nothing wrong with that."
Platini had told the court: "I trusted the president, and knew he would pay me one day.”
The 67-year-old said that he believed the investigation into the payment arose because FIFA were determined to ensure he could not replace Blatter.
"What FIFA did to me was scandalous,” he told the judges. “And the goal was that I didn't become president of FIFA."
