Ex-Fifa chief Blatter and Platini cleared in corruption case
Former Fifa President Sepp Blatter and France soccer great Michel Platini were both cleared of corruption charges by a Swiss court on Tuesday, two and a half years after they were first acquitted of the offences.
The pair, once among the most powerful figures in global soccer, were cleared of fraud at the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in the town of Muttenz, near Basel.
The hearing came about after Swiss federal prosecutors appealed against their 2022 acquittal at a lower court. Both men had denied the charge.
"After 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," Platini's lawyer Dominic Nellen said in a statement.
The case related to a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.26 million) payment Blatter authorised for Platini, a former captain and manager of the French national team, in 2011.
The payment was a consultancy fee paid to Platini for work carried out between 1998 and 2002, which the Frenchman said had been partly deferred because Fifa lacked the funds to pay him in full immediately.
The scandal, which emerged in 2015 when Platini was president of European soccer's ruling body Uefa, ended his hopes of succeeding Blatter, who was forced out of Fifa over the affair.
"The criminal proceedings have had not only legal but also massive personal and professional consequences for Michel Platini – although no incriminating evidence was ever presented. Among other things, the criminal proceedings prevented his election as Fifa president in 2016," Nellen said.
Platini said on Tuesday he was "very happy" and felt that his honour had been restored after a Swiss court acquitted him of fraud.
"The persecution of FIFA and some Swiss federal prosecutors for 10 years is now over," Platini told reporters. "It is now totally over. And for me, today, my honour has returned and I am very happy."
Platini, a former captain and manager of the French national team, said he had received 10,000 messages of support and would celebrate the decision by going to a restaurant.
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