Ten years after the definitive acquittal from the charges of corruption and fraud when he was one step away from FIFA: “150 federations were with me. Infantino had nothing to do with the disqualification, but he kept his job”
“Mr. Platini? We are from the Swiss police. We would like to ask you questions about a payment you received from FIFA years ago…”. September 2015, the world collapses around Platini who doesn’t understand what it’s about but feels a strange shiver. It’s not the tragic story of Detained awaiting trialan extraordinary Alberto Sordi directed by Nanni Loy and the victim of an incredible judicial error that forces him to prison before the truth emerges, when he is now a finished man. But it remains a squalid episode of bad justice, complicity and political-sports conspiracies that will perhaps never be revealed. “I’m not a broken man. I lived well, family and friends helped me. I didn’t become FIFA president, but… who cares.”
bad story
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It could have happened to any man, no one would have imagined ten years of hell for Platini, from 2015 to today, with the infamous accusation of fraud, forgery of documents, unfaithful management, in short of being bribed with two million Swiss francs. A dirty story that ended only in August with the final acquittal, after three sporting convictions between Tas and FIFA, two criminal acquittals and even a senseless police arrest for the investigations into Qatar 2022. Platini now tells everything that happened to him, a liberating outburst. Last night he did it at the Carani Theater in Sassuolo, invited to the Criminal Justice Festival, interviewed by the deputy director of Messenger Alvaro Moretti.
bribe and tax
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It all began at the end of 2015, while FIFA was imploding after the FBI raided the luxury hotel where the Congress delegates were staying in May. Obama had been promised the 2022 World Cup, which then ended up in Qatar in strange ways: America then decided to uncover all the wrongdoing in Zurich and overthrew Blatter’s power. Platini, UEFA president, feels that FIFA is close: “150 federations supported me”. But at the Zurich prosecutor’s office an unknown person says he has proof of a payment of 2 million francs from Blatter to Platini in 2011. Formally, for the work carried out as advisor to the president from ’98 to 2022. In reality, this is the suspicion, for helping him get re-elected in 2011. The payment is true, the agreement is there, the work was there. Small detail: Platini reported that money to the Swiss tax authorities. He would be the first corruptor to pay taxes on the bribe…
everything decided
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Yet the odyssey begins. FIFA, now without Blatter, becomes Platini’s first accuser. The Zurich ethics committee disqualified him for 8 years in December: “A lawyer from Trinidad & Tobago, chosen by the FIFA president, asked me questions but indicted me before answering. From Trinidad, on video. They just wanted to get me out.” The suspicion is this: to prevent him from becoming president. Objective achieved. Platini naturally appeals, and in February the Fifa Court of Appeal reduces the sentence to 6 years which then becomes 4 in May at the CAS. But still an enormity, too much to return to politics. “It’s difficult to live like this. Not for me, but for the family. The granddaughters went to school and told him: ‘Your grandfather is corrupt’.”
the persecutor prosecutor
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Things get complicated because, in parallel with the sports investigation, the criminal investigation continues. Swiss prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand is ruthless with Platini and Blatter and, in the trial that began in March 2022, asks for a year and eight months on probation for them. The story then intertwines with that of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups awarded to Russia and Qatar against all evidence and all dossiers. A full-blown case of corruption. Platini voted for Qatar at the request of then president Sarkozy “for reasons of state”, but in 2019 he even suffered the shame of a police arrest in Nanterre, useless, but very media-focused and which could put him in a bad light with the Swiss judges.
first acquittal
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Platini and Blatter were, however, acquitted of the charges at first instance: “The fraud was not established with a probability bordering on certainty”, wrote the judge. Blatter is a co-accused but not an ally: “He wanted to die at FIFA, he didn’t help me become president”. However, things are not looking good in the Zurich prosecutor’s office: it turns out that prosecutor Michel Lauber met Gianni Infantino in secret between 2015 and 2017. The collusion charges are dropped in 2023, but Lauber, who had denied the meetings, must resign. “Infantino had nothing to do with the sporting disqualification, but he told me: as soon as you come back, I’ll give you my place. It didn’t happen.”
the counterattack
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Hildbrand appeals, asking for exactly the same sentence, but in March 2025 the federal appeals court acquits Platini and Blatter again due to “irrepressible doubts about the reality of the facts described by the prosecution”. The prosecutor doesn’t make a good impression on us, his seems like persecution, and in fact in August he gives up, allowing the time for the new appeal to expire: Platini’s acquittal is definitive. After ten years of interrogations, courts, newspaper headlines and the faces of people “who at a certain point believed me to be a bandit”. Over, or rather not, because “I’m angry with those who hurt me. I will fight against injustice. And now the counterattack will start: very Trapattonian, no?”.
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