Fifa's Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini charged with fraud over $2m payment

Former Fifa officials Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been charged with fraud by Swiss prosecutors after a six-year investigation into a $2 million (£1.47m) payment.

The 85-year-old Blatter and 66-year-old Platini now face a trial within months at the federal criminal court in Bellinzona. They could be jailed for several years if found guilty.“This payment damaged Fifa’s assets and unlawfully enriched Platini,” Swiss federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The case was opened in September 2015 and ousted Blatter as FIFA president.

It also ended then-Uefa president Platini’s campaign to succeed him.

Swiss cases often take years to reach a conclusion.

The case centres on Platini’s written request to Fifa in January 2011 to be paid backdated additional salary for working as a presidential adviser in Blatter’s first term, from 1998-2002.

Blatter authorised Fifa to make the payment within weeks. He was preparing to campaign for re-election in a contest against Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar, where Platini’s influence with European voters was a key factor.

“The evidence gathered by the (attorney general’s office) has corroborated that this payment to Platini was made without a legal basis,” prosecutors said.

Both Blatter and Platini have long denied wrongdoing and cited a verbal agreement they had made, now more than 20 years ago, for the money to be paid.

Blatter has been charged with fraud, mismanagement, misappropriation of Fifa funds and forgery of a document.

Platini has been charged with fraud, misappropriation, forgery and as an accomplice to Blatter’s alleged mismanagement.

“I view the proceedings at the federal criminal court with optimism — and hope that, with this, this story will come to an end and all the facts will be worked through cleanly,” Blatter said in a statement.

Prosecutors had opened criminal proceedings against Blatter in September 2015 ahead of a police raid at Fifa headquarters in Zurich on the day he and Platini attended a meeting of the soccer body’s executive committee.

That came four months after a sweeping US Department of Justice corruption investigation into world soccer was revealed with early-morning arrests of officials from the Americas at luxury hotels in Zurich.

In the fallout of those May 2015 hotel raids, and only days after being elected FIFA president for a fifth time, Blatter announced his plan to resign and call another vote to find a successor.

Platini had long been the expected Fifa heir but his campaign was derailed by the police visit to Fifa’s offices even though he was not yet a suspect.

The Fifa ethics committee soon suspended both men for several weeks before banning each for six years.Blatter has been in poor health and a final round of questioning by Swiss investigators was delayed until August.

After undergoing heart surgery last December, Blatter spent a week in an induced coma.