Former FIFA president Joseph Blatter and French football icon Michel Platini appeared in a Swiss court on Monday for a retrial concerning charges of fraud, forgery, and misappropriation.
This marks the second occasion that the duo has faced trial related to Blatter's controversial payment to the former UEFA president, Platini.
Blatter, who is 88 years old and often referred to as Sepp, expressed his "strong confidence" in achieving another acquittal.
"When accusations of forgery, deceit, and fraud arise, they do not pertain to me — I have never engaged in such actions throughout my life," Blatter stated during the proceedings.
What has prompted the revival of the FIFA fraud case?
In 2022, both individuals were acquitted of fraud concerning a payment of 2 million Swiss francs (€2.1 million or $2.2 million) made by Blatter to Platini.
They argued that the delayed payment, which occurred in 2011, was for consultancy services that had been agreed upon in the 1990s.
At that time, the Swiss Federal Court granted them the benefit of the doubt. However, federal prosecutors in Switzerland subsequently appealed the initial verdicts.
"I still cannot comprehend why the public prosecutor's office is targeting me," Platini, a three-time Ballon d'Or winner and UEFA president from 2007 to 2015, remarked at the beginning of his court appearance on Monday.
When the investigation commenced in 2015, both Blatter's and Platini's careers in sports administration had already come to an end.
This situation dashed Platini's aspirations of succeeding Blatter, who resigned in 2015 after nearly two decades at the helm of FIFA, following a separate corruption scandal.
