KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- Swiss authorities have set June 8 in Bellinzona as the date and place for the start of the corruption charges trial of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA supremo Michel Platini.

Prosecutors claim Blatter authorised an unlawful payment of 2m Swiss francs to Platini in 2011. The two former kingpins of world and European football have denied wrongdoing in a case which erupted in the late summer of 2015.

Blatter and Platini, after on-and-off questioning down the years, were finally indicted in November as prosecutors grew increasingly concerned that they could run out of time.

Blatter and Platini in happier days

One international football trial, involving German officials and a former FIFA general secretary, collapsed two years ago after exceeding a statute of limitations.

Blatter, 85, completed a final set of investigatory interviews last August. after various delays because of his fragile state of health. He underwent heart surgery in December 2020 and could be questioned for only 90 minutes each day.

The investigation concerns the payment by FIFA, on the orders of then-president Blatter to Platini in early 2011, without written justification.

Platini was then both UEFA president and a FIFA vice-president, but the work for which he claimed the payment had been undertaken 10 years earlier when he worked as Blatter’s ‘football counsellor’.

Prosecutors believe the two men lied as to the reason for the payment made, more than coincidentally, a few months before the re-election of Blatter, in June 2011, as FIFA president. Blatter stood unopposed.

A statement on the two men’s indictment last November said: “This payment damaged FIFA’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini. The evidence has corroborated that this payment to Platini was made without a legal basis.”

Blatter has been charged with fraud, mismanagement, misappropriation of FIFA funds and forgery of a document. Platini has been charged with fraud, misappropriation, forgery and as an accomplice to Blatter’s alleged mismanagement.

Platini has always insisted that he was set up by senior football officials with ‘inside information’. The issue killed off his hopes of succeeding Blatter as FIFA president.

Maximum punishments for such offences runs to prison terms of five years.

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