Fifa ‘bribe’ scandal: Blatter held by police
Criminal investigation into football chief ’s £1.3m payment to would-be successor Platini
SEPP BLATTER, the most powerful man in world football, was under criminal investigation last night as police probing the Fifa corruption scandal questioned him over an allegedly illicit £1.3 million payment.
Swiss prosecutors yesterday questioned the 79-year-old president of Fifa over allegations that he made a “disloyal payment” of £1.3 million to Michel Platini, the French-born head of Uefa, who is also the man currently seeking to succeed him.
The payment allegedly relates to work Mr Platini carried out during 1999-2002 and was paid to him in 2011. Mr Platini said yesterday that he was under contract to Fifa at the time and denied any wrongdoing.
Before becoming the head of European football in 2007, Mr Platini had worked as a paid official for Fifa and helped secure Mr Blatter’s re-election as president in 2002.
Mr Blatter is also being investigated over a television rights deal involving Jack Warner, his former colleague, who has been indicted on charges of racketeering.
Mr Blatter’s questioning comes five months after the organisation which he has headed since 1998 was engulfed in allegations of corruption.
His office at Fifa headquarters in Zu- rich was also searched by police who seized “data” in connection with their investigation.
News of his questioning in the criminal case came just before Mr Blatter was due to give a press conference at Fifa headquarters in Zurich.
Investigations by the FBI and Swiss authorities began in May over claims of bungs and illegal payments connected to the awarding of World Cups and sponsorship deals, including the awards of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.
Fourteen officials and sports marketing executives, including some of Mr Blatter’s closest colleagues, were indicted, but he managed to rise above the storm and even sought and won reelection.
However, while denying any wrongdoing, he announced in the wake of the arrests that he would step down in February 2016, as he no longer had the support of everyone in the game.
In a statement yesterday, the Swiss Attorney General’s office said that the investigation into Mr Blatter would focus on two main strands.
One is the large payment made by Mr Blatter to Mr Platini, a former ally who in recent years has sought to distance himself from the Fifa president.
Investigators stressed that Mr Platini, a former French midfielder, was not under criminal investigation and was being treated as a witness.
In a statement issued last night, Mr Platini said: “Today I was asked by the Swiss authorities to provide information relating to the ongoing investigations surrounding Fifa. I have always been open to supporting the relevant
WHEN Swiss police swooped on a five-star hotel in Zurich in May to arrest some of Fifa’s most senior figures, leading to corruption charges against 14 officials and executives, one man emerged notably unscathed.
The FBI insisted that “undisclosed payments, kickbacks and bribes” had become “a way of doing business at Fifa”. However, Sepp Blatter, the organisation’s president since 1998, was absent from the US indictment that prompted the arrests.
He has never been implicated in wrongdoing, and the corruption, he has since added, was “with individuals, it is the people”.
He described himself as “clean”, and successfully continued with his attempt to win a fifth term of office.
But Kelly Currie, the acting US Attorney, had hinted that the indictment was “not the final chapter in our investigation”. To many observers this suggested that the authorities were determined to cast their net even more widely – or higher still. Mr Blatter was not yet clear of the biggest scandal in the history of football.
So yesterday, when Ms Currie’s Swiss counterparts disclosed that they had launched separate criminal proceedings against the 79-year-old, the announcement was not greeted with as much surprise as otherwise might have been the case.
The announcement, though, has dragged into the scandal another figure, Michel Platini, who until now had appeared far removed from the allegations and hints dropped by the authorities investigating Fifa.
According to a statement by the Swiss attorney-general’s office, Mr Blatter is suspected of criminal mismanagement or misappropriation, and of making a “disloyal payment” of around £1.3 million to Mr Platini, the president of the Union of European Football Associations (Uefa). Mr Blatter’s lawyer said that the Fifa chief was co-operating with Swiss authorities and that a review of the evidence would show “no mismanagement occurred”.
Mr Platini, 60, had widely been considered a front runner to succeed Mr Blatter, having led calls for him to stand down after the FBI and Swiss investigations were made public. In July, his declaration that he would stand in the Fifa presidential election next Febru- ary was greeted with joy by many – including England’s Football Association – seeking dramatic reform of football’s international governing body.
Mr Platini’s alleged involvement in the scandal brings into the spotlight a long and largely close relationship with the man accused of paying him a fee for work said to have been carried out by Mr Platini between 1999 and 2002. A gifted footballer in the Seventies and Eighties, Mr Platini later turned to coaching, before becoming co-president of the organising committee of the 1998 World Cup in France. Mr Blatter recruited him as a leading backer for his bid as Fifa president.
Mr Blatter reportedly courted the Frenchman around the time of the World Cup, leading Antonio Matarrese, the then Fifa vice-president, to warn that Mr Platini was being put “into a very tight spot”.
“He would like the scenario of him as president and Platini as his chief executive,” said Mr Matarrese, “and he has put Platini, the man running the World Cup, into a very tight spot”.
Mr Platini, who worked as vice-president of the French Football Federation in 2001 and then took charge of Uefa in 2007, supported subsequent bids by Mr Blatter but drew the line at his plans to stand for a fifth term.
In May, he firmly turned against Mr Blatter, warning that the Swiss Fifa chief was going back on a pledge to step down at the end of his fourth term.
“He is simply scared of the future because he has given his life to the institution to the point where he now identifies himself fully with Fifa,” Mr Platini said.
“I understand the fear of that emptiness he must have – it’s natural – but if he really loves Fifa, he should have put its interests ahead of his own.” Mr Platini spoke out ostensibly as a figure removed from the scandal that had engulfed Fifa – and not for the first time.
Asked in 2011 about problems at world football’s governing body, he said: “Scandals? I only know what I see in the newspapers and you work for the newspapers. You know more than me.” After later announcing his own bid for president in the 2016 election, Chung Mong-Joon of South Korea, a rival, said the past closeness of the pair tainted Mr Platini by association.
Mr Chung said Mr Blatter and Mr Platini once had a “father and son” relationship, suggesting that the Frenchman’s election would lead to anything but a break with the past.
Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, who enjoyed Mr Platini and Uefa’s support when he stood against Mr Blatter in May, also turned on Mr Platini, describing him as “not good for football”.
Controversy has also surrounded his decision to support Qatar’s attempt to host the World Cup in 2022.
Mr Platini was quick to admit he voted for Qatar, apparently in an attempt to show that his horizons were not limited to Europe. But it led to suspicions that he may have been corrupted.
“I’m transparent – I am the only one who revealed who I voted for and did so by my own initiative,” he said in 2014. “I have no regrets at all,” he added.
He also courted controversy for refusing to hand back a watch worth more than $25,000 (£16,450) given to him by the Brazilian Football Confederation at last year’s World Cup. Fifa said it was a breach of its code of ethics.
But he said: “I’m a well-educated person. I don’t return gifts.”