The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Confederation (MPC) decided to close in March one of the two inquiries targeting the ex-president of FIFA Sepp Blatter, note on Friday the French daily Le Monde and German Süddeutsche Zeitung. The information has not yet been confirmed.
According to these newspapers, the ousted boss of the International Football Federation, 84 years old, will not be prosecuted for granting television rights to the Caribbean Football Union (CFU). This is one of the two parts of the proceedings opened against him in 2015 for ‘suspicion of unfair management and breach of trust’.
Questioned by AFP, Sepp Blatter said “not to have received personally the document of the MPC”.
The court suspected Sepp Blatter of having signed a ‘contract unfavorable to FIFA’ with the CFU, then led by the sulphurous Trinidadian Jack Warner, struck off for life by the International Federation and charged with corruption by the American justice.
Terminated in 2011, this contract granted the television rights for the 2010 and 2014 Worlds to the CFU for $ 600,000, an amount deemed to be below market price.
A ‘rehabilitation’
The former FIFA president, however, remains subject to criminal proceedings in the second part of the case: the controversial payment of 2 million francs to Michel Platini, then UEFA president, in February 2011. Haut-Valaisan has always disputed the reproaches. He justified this payment by invoking his function as FIFA adviser between January 1999 and June 2002.
” Once the case concerning the payment of the 2 million francs to Platini will also be closed, I will ask FIFA for my rehabilitation because my suspension by the FIFA ethics committee was made on the basis of accusations by the Swiss justice ‘, assured Mr. Blatter.
In the criminal proceedings, Mr. Blatter had been heard ‘as an accused’ by the MPC. The latter had carried out a search at FIFA headquarters in Zurich with the federal police.
Michel Platini had also been interviewed, but only ‘as a person called to give information’, according to the MPC. He then himself confirmed the payment of 2 million and explained, like Mr. Blatter, that the amount had been paid for the work contracted for FIFA.
/ ATS
– .
