Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini charged with fraud in Switzerland over £1.35m payment

The former Fifa officials Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were charged with fraud and other offences by Swiss prosecutors on Tuesday after investigating a controversial payment of 2m Swiss francs (about £1.35m) for six years.

The 85-year-old Blatter and 65-year-old former France international Platini now face a trial within months at federal criminal court in Bellinzona.

“This payment damaged Fifa’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini,” Swiss federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The case from September 2015 ousted Blatter early as Fifa president and ended the campaign by Platini, the then Uefa president, to succeed his former mentor. It centres on Platini’s written request to Fifa in January 2011 to be paid backdated additional salary for working as a presidential adviser in Blatter’s first term, from 1998 to 2002.

Blatter authorised Fifa to make the payment within weeks. He was preparing to campaign for re-election in a contest against Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar, where Platini’s influence with European voters was a key factor. Both Blatter and Platini have long denied wrongdoing and cited a verbal agreement they had made, now more than 20 years ago, for the money to be paid.

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 was not placed under formal investigation until last year, and months later the more serious allegation of fraud was included against both men.

Prosecutors had opened criminal proceedings against Blatter in September 2015 ahead of a police raid at Fifa headquarters in Zurich on the day he and Platini attended a meeting of the governing body’s executive committee. theguardian.com