Fresh Swiss investigation targets ex-FIFA president Sepp Blatter

Former FIFA president Sepp

Blatter is the target of a new investigation in Switzerland for suspected criminal mismanagement of a $1 million payment from soccer funds.

Blatter has been notified by Swiss federal prosecutors he is an “accused person” over a loan FIFA gave in 2010 to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The 84-year-old Blatter has denied any wrongdoing during decades of financial scandals linked to soccer’s world governing body, though he was banned from the presidency and now risks being brought to trial in his home country.

The payment from a FIFA account on April 13, 2010, was interest-free, unsecured and later waived as a kind of gift, the document detailed.

It is the latest allegation in Swiss and American federal investigations tying FIFA to irregular payments benefiting Jack Warner, its former vice president from Trinidad who is fighting extradition to the United States.

Warner long controlled a key bloc in FIFA elections until he left soccer after being implicated in bribing voters to oppose Blatter in 2011. He was also an elected lawmaker in the Caribbean nation and became a government minister after a general election held in May 2010.

Two former senior FIFA officials – Jérôme Valcke as secretary general, and Markus Kattner as finance director – are also named as accused persons in the document.

The Swiss federal prosecution office did not immediately reply to a request for comment from the AP.

The new investigation is dated May 13, 2020 – several weeks after the office said it was closing one of two criminal proceedings opened against Blatter five years earlier.

The allegation now dropped was that Blatter mismanaged a World Cup broadcast deal for the Caribbean that let Warner personally profit by millions of dollars.

That prosecution decision revealed in April suggested Blatter would be cleared by Swiss justice after years under suspicion and while serving a six-year ban by FIFA’s ethics committee. It expires in October 2021.

The Swiss prosecution document does not directly link the timing of FIFA’s $1 million payment with the general election in Trinidad and Tobago.