The former Fifa president Sepp Blatter has insisted he is “clean with my conscience and clean in my spirit” after being cleared of defrauding football’s governing body by a Swiss court. The complex case centred around a 2.2m Swiss francs (£1.7m) payment made from Fifa to Platini with Blatter’s approval in 2011, for consultancy work a decade earlier. Swiss prosecutors described the payment as “without a legal basis” and said it had “unlawfully enriched Platini” because there was no written contract at the time. The emergence of the payment also led to Blatter ending his reign as Fifa president in disgrace – while Platini lost his job as president of Uefa, the European governing body, after his ban. The 86-year-old Blatter faces a separate criminal proceeding related to authorising a $1m Fifa payment to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association in 2010.

Source: The Guardian July 08, 2022 09:58 UTC