Blatter-Platini
The fall of the two former leaders, banished from world football at the end of 2015, hides a double dispute: first the main case investigated for "unfair management", "breach of trust" and "fraud", that is to say a payment of 2 million Swiss francs from Fifa to Michel Platini in 2011, validated by then president Sepp Blatter without a written contract.
But as the end of the investigation approaches, with a final hearing of the French on Monday and Tuesday in Bern, the two men hammer home that this is a residual salary for an advisory job dating back to 1999-2002.
Michel Platini also sees in this affair a "plot" intended to oust him from the presidency of Fifa which seemed to be open to him, for the benefit of Gianni Infantino.
He therefore counter-attacked at the end of 2018 with a complaint for “slanderous denunciation” and “criminal association”.
Infantino and the floor
Elected in 2016 with the promise to "restore the image of Fifa", the current boss Gianni Infantino has been targeted since July 2020 by criminal proceedings for "incitement to abuse of authority", to "violation of secrecy of function ”and“ obstruction of criminal proceedings ”.
Swiss justice accuses him of three secret meetings in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Lauber, then head of the Public Ministry of the Confederation (MPC), fueling suspicions of collusion between the prosecution and Fifa, civil party in most of the proceedings.
The Italo-Switzerland ensures for its part that it was a question of showing the prosecution "that the new Fifa was a thousand miles from the old", an authority "victim of corrupt officials" under the Blatter era.
But in addition, the prosecutor Stefan Keller saw at the end of 2020 “clues” of “unfair management” in a private jet flight carried out by Mr. Infantino in 2017 and paid by Fifa.
The magistrate has just been designated competent to investigate this aspect.
Suspicions about the Qatari World Cup
The most embarrassing investigation for the body, by the shadow it casts over its queen competition, aims for the attribution to Qatar of the organization of the 2022 World Cup.
Documented by an internal Fifa investigation, suspicion of vote buying during the vote on December 2, 2010 justified a complaint at the end of 2014 to the Swiss justice system, which has been investigating since May 2015 for "money laundering and unfair management" .
At the same time, the French justice is investigating for "active and passive corruption" on a lunch held on November 23, 2010 between Nicolas Sarkozy, then head of state, two senior Qatari leaders and Michel Platini, at the time boss of UEFA.
If Qatar is the focus of attention, the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa are also marred by suspicions of corruption.
Finally, Switzerland had to close in April a lawsuit on the attribution of the World Cup-2006 to Germany, because of the statute of limitations.
Bribes and TV rights
Fifa's financial manna, television rights are also its main source of litigation: alongside the sanctions of its internal justice system, the legal proceedings target both the rights of the World Cups and those of regional tournaments.
Thus the “Fifagate”, which begins with the spectacular arrest on May 27, 2015 of seven world football leaders in Zurich, concerns above all the “racketeering” carried out by South American football officials in exchange for the rights to continental competitions.
Investigated in the United States, the case has already resulted in the conviction of nine years in prison for Paraguayan Juan Angel Napout and four years in prison for Brazilian José Maria Marin.
Jeffrey Webb, another leader from the Cayman Islands, has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $ 6.7 million, but is still awaiting his criminal sentence.
On the rights side of the Worlds, reporting directly to Fifa, the boss of beIN Media and PSG, Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, and ex-secretary general Jérôme Valcke, accused of "unfair management" and "incitement" in a case relating to the Worlds-2026 and 2030, were acquitted at the end of October.
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