Sepp Blat­ter and Michel Pla­ti­ni won again in court Tues­day and now lead 2-0 in tri­al ver­dicts against Swiss fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors.

Once soc­cer’s most pow­er­ful men, for­mer FI­FA pres­i­dent Blat­ter and for­mer UE­FA pres­i­dent Pla­ti­ni were ac­quit­ted for a sec­ond time in a case now in its 10th year on charges of fraud, forgery, mis­man­age­ment and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of more than $2 mil­lion of FI­FA mon­ey in 2011.

Blat­ter, now aged 89, gave lit­tle re­ac­tion lis­ten­ing to the ver­dict of three can­ton­al (state) judges act­ing as a fed­er­al crim­i­nal ap­peals court. Sit­ting in the row in front of Pla­ti­ni, Blat­ter al­ter­nate­ly tapped his fin­gers on his desk or held his left hand over his mouth.

On­ly when the 55-minute ver­dict state­ment was over did Blat­ter smile be­fore reach­ing across to shake his lawyer’s hand. Blat­ter then shared a long hug with his daugh­ter, Corinne.

“You have seen my daugh­ter was com­ing with tears be­cause she be­lieved in (her) fa­ther and I be­lieved in my­self,” said Blat­ter, who spoke of a sword of Damo­cles be­ing re­moved from over his head. “To wait such a long time af­fects the per­son and my fam­i­ly was very much af­fect­ed.”

Pla­ti­ni sat with his arms fold­ed or rub­bing his hands as he lis­tened to a trans­la­tor sit­ting be­side him re­lat­ing the court’s ver­dict in Ger­man in­to his na­tive French.

“This per­se­cu­tion by FI­FA and some Swiss fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors for 10 years is now fin­ished, is now to­tal­ly fin­ished,” Pla­ti­ni said leav­ing the court, in­sist­ing his ho­n­our was re­stored. “So I’m very hap­py.”

The at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s of­fice in Switzer­land had chal­lenged a first ac­quit­tal in Ju­ly 2022 and asked for sen­tences of 20 months, sus­pend­ed for two years. The in­dict­ment al­leged the pay­ment “dam­aged FI­FA’s as­sets and un­law­ful­ly en­riched Pla­ti­ni.”

“Michel Pla­ti­ni must fi­nal­ly be left in peace in crim­i­nal mat­ters,” his lawyer Do­minic Nellen said in a state­ment. ”Af­ter two ac­quit­tals, even the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Switzer­land must re­al­ize that these crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have de­fin­i­tive­ly failed.”

A fur­ther ap­peal to the Swiss supreme court can be filed by the pros­e­cu­tors’ of­fice, which said in a state­ment it “will de­cide about how to fur­ther pro­ceed.”

Decade-long case

Blat­ter and Pla­ti­ni have con­sis­tent­ly de­nied wrong­do­ing in a decade-long case that ul­ti­mate­ly came to noth­ing in court yet to­tal­ly al­tered world soc­cer body FI­FA.

The le­gal case swung on their claims of a ver­bal agree­ment to one day set­tle the mon­ey in ques­tion.

Blat­ter ap­proved FI­FA pay­ing 2 mil­lion Swiss francs (now $2.21 mil­lion) to France soc­cer great Pla­ti­ni in Feb­ru­ary 2011 for sup­ple­men­tary and non-con­tract­ed salary work­ing as a pres­i­den­tial ad­vi­sor from 1998-2002.

The lat­est win for Blat­ter and the 69-year-old Pla­ti­ni came ex­act­ly 9½ years since the Swiss fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion was re­vealed and kicked off events that end­ed the ca­reers of the two men.

That Sep­tem­ber 2015 day in Zurich, po­lice came to in­ter­ro­gate them at FI­FA af­ter an ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee meet­ing when Pla­ti­ni was a strong fa­vorite to suc­ceed his one-time men­tor in an up­com­ing elec­tion.

With Pla­ti­ni soon sus­pend­ed and banned by FI­FA, Eu­ro­pean soc­cer body UE­FA ran his long-time sec­re­tary gen­er­al Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no as its elec­tion can­di­date. In­fan­ti­no was a sur­prise win­ner in Feb­ru­ary 2016 and is set to lead FI­FA un­til at least 2031.

Cor­rup­tion crises

Though fed­er­al court tri­als have twice cleared their names, Blat­ter’s rep­u­ta­tion like­ly al­ways will be tied to lead­ing FI­FA dur­ing cor­rup­tion crises that took down a swath of se­nior soc­cer of­fi­cials world­wide.

Pla­ti­ni, one of soc­cer’s great­est play­ers and lat­er Blat­ter’s pro­tégé in soc­cer pol­i­tics, nev­er did get the FI­FA pres­i­den­cy he of­ten called his des­tiny.

Nei­ther Blat­ter nor Pla­ti­ni has worked in soc­cer since they were sus­pend­ed by the FI­FA ethics com­mit­tee in Oc­to­ber 2015. They were lat­er banned and failed to over­turn the bans in sep­a­rate ap­peals to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport in 2016.

”The crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have had not on­ly le­gal but al­so mas­sive per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al con­se­quences for Michel Pla­ti­ni, al­though no in­crim­i­nat­ing ev­i­dence was ever pre­sent­ed,” Nellen said, sug­gest­ing fur­ther le­gal ac­tion “against those re­spon­si­ble for the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.”

Pla­ti­ni’s ban ex­pired in 2019 and Blat­ter was giv­en a sub­se­quent ban by FI­FA in 2021 months be­fore his first was due to end.

Blat­ter is ex­iled from soc­cer un­til late in 2028 — when he will be 92 — be­cause of an ethics pros­e­cu­tion of al­leged self-deal­ing in eight-fig­ure man­age­ment bonus­es paid for suc­cess­ful­ly or­ga­niz­ing the men’s World Cup in 2010 and 2014.

‘Gen­tle­man’s agree­ment’

The ver­dict was giv­en Tues­day in a low-key provin­cial cour­t­house where a four-day tri­al was held three weeks ago.

Blat­ter and Pla­ti­ni have claimed at five dif­fer­ent ju­di­cial bod­ies — twice at FI­FA, then the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport and now two Swiss fed­er­al crim­i­nal courts — that they had a ver­bal “gen­tle­man’s agree­ment” to one day set­tle the un­paid and non-con­tract­ed salary.

Pla­ti­ni was a sto­ried for­mer cap­tain and coach of the France na­tion­al term when he worked to help Blat­ter get elect­ed to lead FI­FA in Paris on the eve of the 1998 World Cup he or­ga­nized.

The two men said Pla­ti­ni agreed to be a pres­i­den­tial ad­vis­er on an an­nu­al salary of 300,000 Swiss francs (now $340,000) through 2002. They claim there was a ver­bal deal to lat­er get the bal­ance of 1 mil­lion Swiss francs for each year that FI­FA could not pay at the time.

Pla­ti­ni start­ed ask­ing for the mon­ey ear­ly in 2010, cit­ing sev­en-fig­ure pay­ments made to se­nior Blat­ter aides who left FI­FA which showed the soc­cer body could af­ford to pay him. The pay­ment was fi­nal­ly made in Feb­ru­ary 2011.

De­tails of the pay­ment on­ly emerged in the cri­sis that hit FI­FA in May 2015 when U.S. fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors un­sealed a sweep­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al soc­cer of­fi­cials. Swiss au­thor­i­ties made ear­ly-morn­ing ar­rests at ho­tels in Zurich be­fore seiz­ing FI­FA fi­nan­cial and busi­ness records.

In 2015, Swiss fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors al­ready were han­dling a crim­i­nal com­plaint filed by FI­FA. That was about sus­pect­ed fi­nan­cial wrong­do­ing linked to votes in De­cem­ber 2010 that picked Rus­sia and Qatar as fu­ture World Cup hosts.

MUT­TENZ, Switzer­land (AP) —