After six years of research, involving suspicions of conspiracy, the former UEFA president, Michel Platini and the former FIFA president, Shep Blatter, are being brought before Swiss justice in the case of a suspicious payment that «tarnished» their careers in 2015.
From 09:00 local time until 22 June, the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona will try the 66-year-old Frenchman and the 86-year-old Swiss man for «fraud», «wrongful management», «breach of trust» and «false titles», before delivering its verdict on 8 July.
The judges will look at what happened from 1998 and the start of the Platini-Blatter alliance to their growing rivalry and then their joint expulsion from world football, but will also try to distinguish the purely judicial dimension of the case from its political context.
The prosecution accuses the two former leaders of «illegally making a payment of 2 million Swiss francs (€1.8 million) to Michel Platini at the expense of FIFA».
In the crosshairs of other related proceedings, in France for the three-time holder of the «Golden Ball» (for the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar), and in Switzerland for Shep Blatter, the two former «powerful» of world football are facing a five-year prison sentence and/or a fine.
The two defendants will have the opportunity to testify on the case that made them football pariahs, at a time when Michel Platini, then UEFA boss, seemed ideally placed to lead FIFA after the scandals that had led to Blatter's resignation.
The defense and the prosecution agree on one point. That the Frenchman advised Shep Blatter well between 1998 and 2002, during the latter's first term as head of FIFA, and the two men signed a contract in 1999 agreeing to an annual fee of 300,000 Swiss francs.
But in January 2011, «more than eight years after the end of his activity as a consultant», the former France national team captain «claimed a claim of two million Swiss francs», which the football authority paid, as the prosecution notes.
According to the indictment, this is an «unfounded» payment, obtained by «artfully misleading» FIFA's internal controls with false allegations by the two leaders, which is the basic criterion of fraud.
The two men insist that from the beginning of their partnership, they had decided on an annual salary of one million Swiss francs, verbally and without witnesses, without FIFA's finances allowing for an immediate payment to Platini.
«It is a residual salary, owed by FIFA, under a verbal contract and paid under conditions of perfect legality. Nothing else! I have acted, as I have done throughout my life and throughout my career, with absolute honesty,» Platini stressed in a statement to the French News Agency (AFP).
Platini also considers himself a victim of a conspiracy to block his run for the FIFA presidency and particularly denounces the... blurred role of the current leader of world football, Gianni Infantino, who was elected in 2016 and when the investigation of the case had begun.
A former «right-hand man» of the Frenchman at UEFA, the Italian-Swiss agent has been targeted since 2020, in a process related to three secret meetings with the former attorney general, in which a judge and the former FIFA judicial director are accused.
However, given that the Swiss judiciary has so far refused to participate in the two files, discussions should quickly focus on the reality of the oral agreement between the two defendants. That is, they will have to explain the contradiction with the 1999 contract and the fact that this debt was never foreseen by FIFA.
As a civil party, FIFA intends to claim the money paid in 2011 «so that the money embezzled by the defendants for personal purposes can be returned to the one and only purpose for which it was intended: football», lawyer Hol Sirazi told AFP.
