Blatter now set to face Swiss criminal inquiry over FIFA museum costings
KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: Sepp Blatter, 86-year-old former president of FIFA, is reportedly the subject of yet another criminal investigation by the Swiss authorities – this time over the financing of the world federation’s football museum in Zurich.
Blatter, expelled from football and suspended originally in 2016, has been a subject of perpetual investigation ever since although – like almost all investigations arising out of the historic FIFAGate scandal – nothing has yet come to court.
A world football museum was a long-time project of Blatter’s during his 17-year presidency and the eventual choice of Zurich was always controversial because of the leasing terms of the property in downtown Zurich.
A report in the French newspaper Le Monde claims that Blatter is now subject to allegations of “unfair management”, as is FIFA’s French former secretary-general Jerome Valcke. This follows the registration of a complaint in December 2020 by FIFA “in relation to the FIFA museum project, which generated an invoice of 500 million Swiss francs [more than 460 million euros]”.
FIFA claimed that the property rental contract was “above market value”
In its complaint, FIFA said Blatter’s regime had “devoted 140 million to the renovation and [to] the modernization of a building which the body does not own, while committing to a rental contract at term above market value, which will cost FIFA a total of 360 million. »
This was estimated at CHF 26m above proper valuation.
The museum project was launched in 2013 and opened on February 28, 2016, two days after the election of Gianni Infantino as new president in succession to Blatter.
It is understood that Infantino would happily have cancelled the project but for the heavy costs which this would have incurred.
Blatter is currently under investigation for the notorious “disloyal payment” to former UEFA president Michel Platini as well as a rights deal with ex-CONCACAF supremo Jack Warner (currently in Trinidad and Tobago, contesting an extradition application by the United States).
Infantino, for his part, is subject to a criminal inquiry over secret meetings, in 2016 and 2017, with the then Swiss Attorney-General Michael Lauber.
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