Fallen football chiefs Blatter and Platini face fraud trial

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on August 30, 2020 shows a file photo taken on November 22, 2019 of French football legend Michel Platini attending an event to receive a “Legendes du Sport” (Sports Legends) award at the Musee National du Sport (National Sports Museum) in the French riviera city of Nice; and a file photo taken on May 28, 2019 of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter speaking during an interview with AFP in Zurich. On August 31, 2020, Michel Platini, then Sepp Blatter on September 1, 2020: the two former bosses of the world and European football will be heard in Bern, Switzerland, by the federal prosecutor as part of the procedure which was opened in 2015 on the controversial payment of millions of Swiss francs. VALERY HACHE, Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, once the chiefs of the world and European football, face trial on Wednesday over a suspected fraudulent payment that shook the sport and torpedoed their time at the top.

Former FIFA president Blatter, 86, and Platini, 66, start a two-week trial at Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court in the southern city of Bellinzona, following a mammoth investigation that began in 2015 and lasted six years.

The pair are being tried over a two million Swiss franc ($2.08 million) payment in 2011 to Platini, who was then in charge of European football’s governing body UEFA.

They are accused of having, to the detriment of FIFA, illegally obtained the payment, plus social security contributions of 229,126 francs, in favour of Platini.

The former French football great “submitted to FIFA in 2011 an allegedly fictitious invoice for a (alleged) debt still existing for his activity as an adviser for FIFA in the years 1998 to 2002,” according to the