BELLINZONA: Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini fell out badly over the award to Qatar of World Cup host rights but the former supremos of world federation FIFA and European governing body UEFA presented a united front on the second day of their fraud trial in Switzerland.

Both deny assorted charges related to a payment of 2 million Swiss francs made to the Frenchman in 2011 by FIFA on Blatter’s authorisation. Both men insisted in court that the sum was a balance of wages for the period when Platini worked as Blatter’s ‘footballer counsellor’ between 1998 and 2002.

If found guilty both men face a maximum sentence of five years’ prison.

Platini told the court that he had been recruited by Blatter in early 1998 to endorse the latter’s campaign to win the FIFA presidency on the imminent retirement of Joao Havelange. Blatter, at the time, was FIFA’s general secretary and ceo.

Platini told the court that, on being asked what he wanted as a salary to work for FIFA, he answered “for fun, I want one million per year, pesetas, lira, roubles, marks, it’s up to you to decide.”

However he understood that Blatter could not have honored this “oral agreement”  because of “significant financial problems” so he agreed, in August 1999, an interim consultant contract worth 300,000 annual Swiss francs.

Platini added: “Blatter told me: ‘my general secretary is earning 300,000 Swiss francs, I’m going to give you the same contract as him and for the rest we’ll see later.”

Asked by the court president “why this 1999 contract does not mention anything about the amount which was due to you according to the oral agreement, i.e. a total of 2.8 million Swiss francs?” Platini responded: “I knew that one day Mr Blatter would pay me, I had faith in the president of FIFA, I am not a man of money, I have made a very good living since I was 17.”

Earlier Blatter had endorsed Platini’s assessment. He said that, after becoming FIFA president, he had come to a gentlemen’s agreement, sealed with a handshake to pay Platini one million francs annually as a technical director.

Blatter added: “But in 2001, we had a very bad year and in 2002 we weren’t in position to pay that.” He said FIFA’s finances had improved only after the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Platini then took the stand and confirmed that Blatter offered him a verbal contract once he became FIFA president. “How much do you want in salary” Platini recalled Blatter asking him. “I said ‘one million’ and he said ‘ok.’”

A year later when he realized that he was working without a contract, he approached FIFA to rectify that, he said.

Platini said he agreed to a salary at the same amount but that they didn’t discuss when he’d be paid the remaining 700,000 francs because “I trusted the president and that one day or another he would pay me.”

When asked why he waited until 2010 to demand the missing money, Platini implied he didn’t need the money immediately, but said he’d noticed that a senior executive leaving FIFA in 2010 got a big payout and it was about time he got his cash.

Platini said he reminded FIFA of the missing money, submitted an invoice and said he was paid 10 days later. Still, he said the whole experience left him angry with the organization.

“The Attorney-General’s office was doing its job, but what FIFA has done to me is scandalous,” he said, adding that the goal was clearly to sabotage his bid for the presidency of the body.

Platini was the bookmakers’ favorite to succeed Blatter before the FIFA ethics committee suspended him in 2015 from football over the controversial payment.

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In a further significant section of questioning Olivier Thormann, former prosecutor and current president of the TPF Court of Appeal, explained ho and why he opened the original investigation.

Thormann, who faces criminal proceedings himself over an investigation into curfent FIFA president Gianni Infantino, said that information about the Platini payment had beemn given to him by the former FIFA financial director Markus Kattner.

This took place on May 27, 2015, during a seizure of electronic data placed under seal at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich.

Kattner allegedly gave him Thormann “a list” of payments made to executive committee members in 2010. Thormann had assured Kattner that his witness status would protect him against any possible legal action over the issue.

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