The Swiss Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) said today it had appealed the acquittal of former UEFA leader Michel Platini and former FIFA president Sepp Blatter in an alleged fraud case.
The MP appealed to the Federal Criminal Court and “asked for the full annulment of the first instance judgment,” the statement said.
After six years of investigation and a two-week trial, the 67-year-old French football icon and 86-year-old Sepp Blatter were acquitted on July 8.
Both were sentenced to five years in prison and the MP had asked for a suspended sentence of one year and eight months.
The two football directors have responded in court for “illegally obtaining, to the detriment of FIFA, a payment of two million Swiss francs [1,8 milhões de euros] in favor of Michel Platini,” said the MP.
The defense and the prosecution agreed on one point: Platini had advised Sepp Blatter during his first term at FIFA between 1998 and 2002, and the two men signed an agreement in 1999, which provided for an annual fee of 300,000. Swiss franc (305 thousand euros), paid in full by FIFA.
However, in January 2011, the Frenchman – who was now UEFA president (2007-2015) – claimed “a debt of two million Swiss francs”, described by the MP as a “false bill”.
The two men insisted that they had agreed an annual salary of one million Swiss francs (900,000 euros) from the start in a verbal “gentlemen’s agreement”, without witnesses.
The Frenchman was “worth the million,” Blatter assured magistrates, while Platini, for his part, described the negotiations as so informal that he did not specify the currency: “As a joke I said ‘pesetas, lira, ruble, Marks, it’s up to you. .'” he explained in court.
The court ruled that the evidence of fraud was not “established with a plausibility guaranteeing certainty”, thereby applying the general criminal law principle, according to which “doubt should benefit the accused”.
Source: DN
