Blatter and Platini reject all the accusations

The former president of FIFA Joseph Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini today rejected all the accusations on the second day of trial for alleged fraud around a two million Swiss franc payment from the first to the second in 2011, Swiss television RTS reported.

The one who was the head of the international federation between 1998 and 2015, however, refused to respond to FIFA’s lawyer when asked about that payment, stating that his successor at the head of the international federation, Gianni Infantino, He had not responded to his requests since his election in 2016.

Blatter, 86, He assured that it was late fees to the former French soccer player for advisory services carried out between 1998 and 2002, with which he closed a “verbal contract”, and denied that the appearance of the invoice on the controversial payment was part of a plot to prevent Platini from succeeding him at FIFA.

Platini instead he accused FIFA of having committed “a scandal” against him and Blatter”with the objective known to all that I would not become president of the organization”.

The former captain of the French team insisted in answering several questions that money had never interested him, and he and Blatter recalled that at the beginning of the professional collaboration it was not clear what salary Platini would charge for his servicesalthough this was finally set at around 300,000 Swiss francs per year.

Both former world soccer directors are being tried by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court, in the city of Bellinzona, under accusations of fraud, unfair management, breach of trust and document falsification

The hearings will last until June 22, and it is expected that the sentence of this trial will be handed down around July 8.

The accusation asks for the two former sports leaders up to five years in prison or the payment of a fine.

The FIFA Ethics Committee already disqualified in 2015 for this scandal to Blatter and Platini for eight yearswhich prevented the Frenchman from running for the presidency of the organization, won by Infantino, then general secretary of UEFA.

Blatter commented in his appearance this Thursday that after the “punishment” imposed with that disqualification he has lost most of his friends and that even his family had suffered harassment, for which he was happy to be able to defend himself publicly in court “so that everything This can end.”