KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING — Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been notified that the Swiss judiciary will push ahead to press charges against both men over the notorious “disloyal payment” by FIFA back in 2010.

Both the Swiss former president of world football federation and the French ex-supremo of European governing body UEFA have denied any and all wrongdoing.

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

The investigation concerns the payment by FIFA, on the orders of then-president Blatter, of two million Swiss francs 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’.

Media reports in Switzerland state that both men and their lawyers have been served with formal notice that the public prosecutor of the Swiss federation intends to file indictments against them. Defence lawyers have the right now to demand sight of the evidence.

Blatter is being prosecuted for “suspicion of fraud, breach of trust, forgery of titles and unfair management.” Platini, 66, would be charged with “suspicion of fraud, participation in breach of trust, participation in unfair management and forgery in securities”.

Federal prosecutor Thomas Hildebrand, who has been responsible for the criminal investigation since 2019, suspects the two men of having lied as to the reason for the payment made a few months before the re-election of Blatter, in June 2011, as FIFA president.

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