KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: Michel Platini, French former president of European federation UEFA, has launched legal action against his old general secretary Gianni Infantino, now the president of world governing body FIFA.

Platini’s own FIFA ambitions were wrecked by suspension in 2015 for a financial irregularity he has always denied.

He has now confirmed having filed a a complaint in the French courts against Infantino for improper management in having plotted against his bid for the top job in world football.

The complaint, filed last November with the French Prosecutor’s Office, seeks to have the French justice take charge of an investigation which has already been shut down by Swiss authorities.

This is the second time that Platini has tried to have the matter addressed by French magistrates, who at first, given the fact that the defendants were Swiss, delegated the case to the authorities in Switzerland who abandoned the case.

In this new complaint, Platini is asking the French Prosecutor’s Office to question both Infantino and Marci Villiger, FIFA’s former legal director, over conspiracy.

He has also requested the questioning of other individuals including the senior prosecutor in the canton of Valais, Ricardo Arnold , a former Swiss federal chief prosecutor in Oliver Thormann as well as former Attorney-General Michael Lauber and former aide and spokesman André Marty.

Lauber is known to have undertaken a series of meetings with Infantino before the FIFA payment scandal which led to the suspensions from football of both Platini and the then FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Platini was banned initially for six years. This was reduced to four years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

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