Skip to main content

WOW! Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini Are Acquitted On Charges Of Defrauding FIFA By Swiss Court


The case centered around a $2 million payment from FIFA to Platini with Blatter’s approval in 2011, for work done a decade earlier.

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were acquitted on charges of defrauding FIFA by a Swiss criminal court on Friday, a rare positive outcome for the pair who were among soccer’s most powerful figures before being embroiled in corruption investigations.

                             Sepp Blatter

The case was centered around a $2 million payment from FIFA to Platini with Blatter’s approval in 2011, for work done a decade earlier. The verdict followed an 11-day trial last month at the Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland in Bellinzona.

“Following the decision of the judges of the Court of Bellinzona, this morning, I wanted to express my happiness for all my loved ones that justice has finally been done after seven years of lies and manipulation,” Platini said in a statement. “The truth has come to light during this trial.”

"I kept saying it: my fight is a fight against injustice. I won a first game. In this case, there are culprits who did not appear during this trial. Let them count on me, we will meet again. Because I will not give up and I will go all the way in my quest for truth.”

Swiss prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand had requested a 20-month suspended sentence for both Blatter and Platini.

Blatter announced his plan in June 2015 to resign early as president, in the fallout from a sprawling American corruption investigation. Less than four months later, a separate but cooperating case by Swiss prosecutors led to the Platini payment being investigated.

The fallout removed Blatter from office but also ended Platini’s campaign to succeed his former mentor and saw the French soccer great removed as president of UEFA, the governing body of European soccer.

“Believe me, going from being a legend of world soccer to a devil is very difficult, especially when it comes to you in a totally unfair way,” Platini added.

                          Michel Platini

Both Blatter and Platini have long denied wrongdoing and claim they had a verbal deal in 1998 for Platini to get extra salary that FIFA could not pay at the time. Platini signed a contract in August 1999 to be paid 300,000 Swiss francs ($300,000) annually.

That defense first failed with judges at the FIFA ethics committee, which banned them from soccer, and later in separate appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Platini finally got a legal victory in the first criminal case after losses in five civil courts, including at the European Court of Human Rights.

His ban by FIFA for unethical conduct expired in October 2021 and Friday’s verdict should clear the way for Platini to return to work in soccer.




Comments

Post a Comment

Type your comments here

Popular posts from this blog

The Guardian - Atiku ‘outperforms’ Tinubu, Peter Obi on positive ratio metrics – Study shows

A new study has revealed that the presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has outperformed the two other major presidential candidates – Peter Obi of Labour Party and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC – on positive ratio metrics in all the mentions from all discussions about the presidential candidates across all media platforms and fora reviewed. According to the report which adopted Artificial Intelligence tools to analyse 500,000 mentions of the candidates on both traditional and social media within a one-month period, it revealed that although Atiku Abubakar has less mentions on Twitter compared to Peter Obi, he, however, got more positive sentiments from people than the duo of Tinubu and Peter Obi. This means that people who discussed the candidates said more positive things about Atiku Abubakar than they did for Peter Obi and even expressed lesser positive sentiments about Tinubu. The 46-page document by Cust...
Post a Comment
Read more

In The Spotlight

Kim Kardashian Gives Lecture at Harvard Business School. Yet another win for Kim Kardashian as the reality TV star and businesswoman, visited HBS in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Friday. Kim and Skims co-founder Jens Grede, as a part of a direct-to-consumer seminar, gave a talk to students about the shapewear company for nearly two hours. Though cameras did follow her around campus, the seminar itself was not filmed. Kardashian's Skims brand doubled in valuation last year after a $240 million financing round led by hedge fund Lone Pine Capital and investment firm D1 Capital Partners. Kardashian's net worth is estimated to be $1.4 billion. Kim Kardashian @KimKardashian · Follow I spoke At Harvard Business School yesterday for a class called HBS Moving Beyond DTC. The class’s assignment was to learn about @skims , so my partner Jens and I spoke about our marketing, our challenges and our greatest wins. 9:04 PM · Jan 21, 2023 28.7K Reply Share The company is currently estimated to b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Music From Universal Music Group Will No Longer Feature On TikTok

Universal Music Group will no longer allow its music on TikTok following the Wednesday expiration of a licensing deal between the two companies. The takedown of UMG-related music began overnight.  Universal Music Group is literally the largest record label ... in the history of the music industry,” said Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University. An “uncountable number of tracks and sounds” would be impacted on TikTok, he added, significantly limiting options for creators." The expiration of licensing between UMG and TikTok arrived after the two companies were unable to reach a new agreement — and soon shared heated exchanges. In a Tuesday letter addressed to artists and songwriters, UMG said that it had been pressing TikTok on three issues: “appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok’s users.” UMG said that TikTok proposed paying its artists and songwr...
Post a Comment
Read more