Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and French football legend Michel Platini have been cleared of fraud for a second time.
The two former football leaders, once at the top of FIFA and UEFA, were accused of fraud, forgery, mismanagement, and wrongly receiving more than $2 million (£1.5 million) of FIFA funds in 2011.
Switzerland’s attorney general had appealed their first acquittal from July 2022, seeking 20-month suspended prison sentences for both men.
Blatter, now 89, and Platini, 69, have always denied any wrongdoing.
They were once again found not guilty by the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in Muttenz, near Basel.
The case centred around a payment of 2 million Swiss francs (about $2.21 million today) that Blatter authorised in 2011 for Platini, for advisory work carried out between 1998 and 2002—despite no written contract for the extra pay.
The Swiss investigation began in 2015, at a time when Platini was a frontrunner to succeed Blatter as FIFA president, leading to both men’s eventual exit from football leadership.
Although the courts have cleared them twice, Blatter’s image remains linked to the corruption scandals that shook FIFA during his time in charge.
As for Platini—once one of the game’s greatest players and a rising political figure in football—he never reached the FIFA presidency, a role he long believed was his destiny.
