FIFA, UEFA former bosses back in court in new fraud trial

ZURICH, Switzerland

Former FIFA president Joseph Blatter and French football legend Michel Platini on Monday returned to court in Switzerland as they face a retrial on fraud, forgery and misappropriation charges.

It is the second time the pair stand in the trial connected with Blatter's payment to former UEFA chief Platini.

The 88-year-old Blatter — commonly known as Sepp — said he was "very confident" of another acquittal.

"When people talk about forgery and lies and fraud, that's not me — it's not been me in my entire life," Blatter told the court.

In 2022, the pair was cleared of fraud over a 2 million Swiss franc (€2.1 million or $2.2 million) payment from Blatter to Platini.

They claimed the delayed payment in 2011 was for consultancy work agreed upon in the 1990s.

The Swiss Federal Court at the time gave them the benefit of the doubt. But the country's federal prosecutors appealed against the original verdicts.

"I still don't understand why the public prosecutor's office is picking on me," Platini, the three-time Ballon d'Or winner who was UEFA president from 2007 to 2015, said at the start of his court hearing on Monday.

When the case was opened in 2015, both Blatter's and Platini's careers in sports administration were over.

It crushed Platini's hopes of eventually succeeding Blatter, who in 2015 stepped down after leading  FIFA for nearly two decades following a separate corruption scandal.