At 84, Sepp Blatter wins a second legal victory. Already partially cleared, in May 2020, by the public prosecutor of the Swiss Confederation (MPC) in the context of the criminal proceedings against him since September 2015, in particular for “Suspicion of fraud, breach of trust, and unfair management”, the former Swiss president of the International Football Federation (FIFA) learned that another aspect of the investigation was closed by the federal prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand.
According to information from World, this part of the procedure concerns a private jet flight carried out in 2007 by Jack Warner, the former president of the Football Confederation of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, indicted for corruption by the American justice. FIFA paid for this trip for an amount of 365,000 dollars. On July 30, 2020, Mr. Blatter was heard in Bern, at the headquarters of the MPC, about this case.
“In January 2021, the MPC classified the procedure in another section [remboursement d’une dette de tiers résultant d’un voyage en avion] atfter having closed the investigation », Confirms the Swiss prosecution at World. Mr Blatter’s lawyer, Me Lorenz Erni declined to comment.
In May 2020, the MPC had “Extended the criminal proceedings to other partial facts and allegations”. The Swiss prosecution is particularly interested in a “ million dollar unsecured loan ” paid from a FIFA account, on April 13, 2010, at the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation, then under the control of Jack Warner. The former FIFA chief financial officer, Markus Kattner, and the former secretary general of the body, Jérôme Valcke, are also targeted by this investigation for “Suspicion of unfair management”.
An appeal filed by FIFA
The other case in which Mr. Blatter was targeted, and for which prosecutor Hildbrand had decided to file part of the procedure in May 2020, concerned a controversial television contract: this had been signed by the Swiss in 2005 with Caribbean Football Union, then chaired by Mr. Warner.
The magistrate had closed this file, despite the “Official requests” submitted by FIFA to the MPC for the investigation to continue. “An appeal has been filed [par la FIFA] against this classification order and it is now up to the complaints court of the Federal Criminal Court to rule on this subject ”, explains the MPC.
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