ZURICH–Fi­fa pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter's lawyer says he will co-op­er­ate with Swiss au­thor­i­ties who are con­duct­ing a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion in the world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body.

But in giv­ing the com­mit­ment, at­tor­ney Richard Cullen said "cer­tain­ly no mis­man­age­ment oc­curred" in his client's run­ning of Fi­fa.

The lat­est al­le­ga­tions al­so threat­en UE­FA pres­i­dent Michel Pla­ti­ni, Blat­ter's one-time pro­tege and favourite to suc­ceed him in Feb­ru­ary's elec­tion. Pla­ti­ni was yes­ter­day ques­tioned as a wit­ness about tak­ing a "dis­loy­al pay­ment" from Blat­ter of two mil­lion Swiss francs (US$2.04 mil­lion) of Fi­fa mon­ey in Feb­ru­ary 2011.

At the time, Pla­ti­ni was al­ready tipped as a fu­ture Fi­fa leader though un­like­ly to run against Blat­ter in that year's pres­i­den­tial elec­tion–in­stead back­ing the in­cum­bent against Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam of Qatar. Blat­ter was re-elect­ed in May 2011 af­ter Bin Ham­mam with­drew amid bribery al­le­ga­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Switzer­land's at­tor­ney gen­er­al, the mon­ey was sup­pos­ed­ly paid nine years lat­er for Pla­ti­ni's work as Blat­ter's foot­ball ad­vis­er at Fi­fa from 1999 to 2002.

Un­der Swiss law, a pay­ment is clas­si­fied dis­loy­al if it is against the best in­ter­ests of the em­ploy­er–in this case Fi­fa.

Pla­ti­ni said in a state­ment is­sued by UE­FA that he was en­ti­tled to re­ceive the mon­ey, but did not ad­dress the ap­par­ent nine-year wait for pay­ment.

(See Page A64)

The Amer­i­can probe rocked Fi­fa on May 27, when se­nior of­fi­cials sus­pect­ed of bribery and rack­e­teer­ing were ar­rest­ed in dawn raids at a lux­u­ry Zurich ho­tel two days be­fore Blat­ter's re-elec­tion. Blat­ter is a stat­ed tar­get of that case but has al­ways de­nied be­ing cor­rupt, blam­ing in­di­vid­u­als who are out­side of Fi­fa's con­trol

But the Swiss al­le­ga­tions sug­gest au­thor­i­ties sus­pect Blat­ter of crim­i­nal mis­man­age­ment of Fi­fa mon­ey to shore up his own pow­er base–po­lit­i­cal en­rich­ment–if not tak­ing mon­ey him­self.

Blat­ter is the first per­son pub­licly re­vealed to be for­mal­ly quizzed as a sus­pect in the Swiss case, which Fi­fa in­sti­gat­ed last No­vem­ber when it com­plained about pos­si­ble mon­ey laun­der­ing in the 2018-2022 World Cup bid­ding con­tests won by Rus­sia and Qatar.

Yes­ter­day's al­le­ga­tions al­so re­late to un­der­val­ued World Cup broad­cast­ing con­tracts for the Caribbean that Blat­ter agreed to with dis­graced for­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er in 2005.

Warn­er, who was a long-time Fi­fa pow­er bro­ker sup­port­ing Blat­ter at elec­tions, was in­dict­ed in the wide-rang­ing US case in May and is still fight­ing ex­tra­di­tion in T&T. (AP)