Former UEFA president Michel Platini has filed a defamation complaint against three former members of Fifa, AFP learned on Wednesday from a source close to the matter, confirming information from the Parisian. Definitively acquitted by Swiss justice in August after ten years of proceedings in the fraud case which precipitated his fall, the former number 10 of the France team filed a complaint at the end of November against three former leaders of Fifa, this source confirmed.
This complaint targets public comments by these former members of the International Football Federation, whose names have not been filtered, who spoke about ten years ago about the accusations made against Platini. He and then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter were accused of “illegally obtained, to the detriment of Fifa, a payment of 2 million Swiss francs” (1.8 million euros) in January 2011 in favor of the legendary captain of the Blues, according to the Swiss prosecution.
The two men insisted for their part that they had from the start decided on an annual salary of one million Swiss francs, by a “gentlemen’s agreement” oral and without witnesses, without Fifa’s finances allowing immediate payment to Platini. The outbreak of the affair in mid-2015, just after the resignation of Sepp Blatter swept away by a cascade of scandals, blocked Michel Platini’s path to the presidency of Fifa, clearing that of the Italian-Swiss Gianni Infantino, then the Frenchman’s right-hand man at UEFA.
