Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 27
AFP: Michel Platini, the former head of UEFA, told a Swiss appeals court on Monday, where his acquittal on fraud charges is being examined, that FIFA “owed” him the two million Swiss francs ($2.2 million) at the heart of the case.
“I still don’t understand why the public prosecutor’s office is picking on me,” the French three-time Ballon d’Or winner said at the start of his hearing.
The long-running legal saga began in 2015, when Blatter quit as head of FIFA in a corruption crisis.
The pair were acquitted by the Swiss Federal Court in June 2022 of charges that included “disloyal management”, “breach of trust” and “forgery of securities”.
In 1999, Blatter allegedly told Platini, who had been advising without a written contract, that he could not pay him the million so the two men agreed a written deal for 300,000 Swiss francs.
“A contract is a contract, a word is a word,” he said. “FIFA owed me that money and I would have done anything to get it back.”
Blatter said on Monday that he had struck “a gentleman’s agreement” with Platini but that the agreement had been purely oral, was made without witnesses and did not appear in FIFA’s accounts.
