Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and French football legend Michel Platini will appear in a Swiss court Tuesday to learn whether the case that ended their football careers will result in acquittals or corruption convictions.
Once powerful figures in global football, the pair will stand before the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court, 2.5 years after being acquitted of fraud.
Swiss federal prosecutors challenged the 2022 decision, prompting the new hearing in Muttenz, near Basel. Both Blatter and Platini deny the charges.
The case centers on a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.27 million) payment Blatter authorized for Platini in 2011, when he was captain and manager of the French national team.
Platini and Blatter said the payment was a consultancy fee for work between 1998 and 2002, which Platini said had been partly deferred because FIFA lacked the funds to pay him in full immediately.
The affair, which emerged in 2015 when Platini was president of European football body UEFA, torpedoed his hopes of eventually succeeding Blatter at the top of FIFA.
Blatter and Platini were suspended from football in 2015 by FIFA for ethics breaches, originally for eight years. Although their exclusions were later reduced, the ban ended their careers as senior football administrators. The 2022 indictment accused Blatter and Platini of deceiving FIFA staff in 2010 and 2011 about an obligation for world football's ruling body to pay Platini.
"They falsely claimed that FIFA owed Platini, or that Platini was entitled to, the sum of 2 million Swiss francs for advisory work. This deception was achieved through repeated untruthful claims made by both accused parties," the indictment said.
The pair were cleared in the 2022 case after a judge accepted that their account of a "gentlemen's agreement" for the payment was credible, while there were serious doubts about the prosecution's allegation that the payment was fraudulent.
Blatter, who was FIFA president for 17 years until 2015, has insisted he did nothing wrong. Now a frail 89-year-old, he told Reuters he was the victim of a witch-hunt.
Platini, a three-time European Footballer of the Year, insisted the money was related to back pay.
"There's no corruption, there's no swindling, there's nothing at all," he told reporters at the start of the appeal.
His lawyer, Dominic Nellen, said the case was designed to prevent Platini from becoming FIFA president.
"Platini was the most likely successor to Blatter in 2015, but someone wanted him out of the way," Nellen said. "At every turn, there seems to be an attempt to stop Platini from becoming president of FIFA."
Blatter was eventually replaced by Gianni Infantino, who had worked for Platini at UEFA. Infantino owed his candidacy to the fact that Europe's preferred candidate, Platini, was banned from football.
Infantino has denied helping to bring about Platini's downfall and said he only stepped up when UEFA asked him after the allegations against Platini emerged.
Prosecutors want a sentence of 20 months in jail, suspended for two years, for both Blatter and Platini, and to confiscate the money.
Both sides can appeal the judgment to the Swiss Federal Court, the country's highest legal authority.
