Blatter, Platini finally going to court in FIFA fraud trial

The additional money was never accrued as it should have been in FIFA accounts from 1999, according to then-FIFA accountant Jeannine Erni, who was interviewed for different investigations. She said the payment was "odd" and looked related to the 2011 presidential election.

Another former staffer, then-FIFA head of compliance Ivo Bischofsberger, said in questioning cited by CAS that he "always had doubts about the whole story. Did it smell? Yes." Platini's contract with FIFA, signed in August 1999, was for 300,000 Swiss francs ($312,000) annually. Platini said he asked for "1 million" but Blatter would pay only the same as FIFA's then-secretary general and promised the balance later.

Platini's contract expired in 2002, when he was elected to the FIFA executive committee. A letter to him, signed by Blatter in September 2002 and seen by The Associated Press, said their agreement was settled and terminated.

Platini testified at CAS he first asked for extra money early in 2010 after FIFA paid a seven-figure severance to Jerome Champagne, a French former diplomat who was ousted as a Blatter aide. The invoice eventually requested 500,000 Swiss francs ($520,000) extra for each year of advisory work.

Witnesses due in court include two former elected FIFA and UEFA officials, ángel María Villar of Spain and Antonio Mattarese of Italy, and former federal prosecutor Olivier Thormann, who was cleared in 2018 of misconduct in the FIFA investigation.

Thormann will be questioned Thursday as Platini's lawyers try to show the prosecution office colluded with soccer officials, and helped Gianni Infantino become FIFA president in 2016.

Attempts to summon Infantino to be questioned in court have failed. Platini has also filed a criminal complaint in France against Infantino, his former general secretary at UEFA.

Platini and Blatter have both questioned how prosecutors learned about the disputed payment.

Swiss prosecutors began investigating FIFA in November 2014 when the soccer body filed a criminal complaint about suspected money laundering in bid contests to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Russia and Qatar won those votes by the FIFA executive committee in December 2010.

Swiss authorities seized documents and data at FIFA headquarters on May 27, 2015 — the day soccer officials were arrested in Zurich hotels in a separate, sprawling American investigation of corruption.

Three weeks later, then-attorney general Michael Lauber said 53 suspect transactions possibly linked to World Cup bidding had been alerted by banks in Switzerland.

More than 11 years after Platini was paid, FIFA is trying to recover the money.

"FIFA has brought a civil action against both Blatter and Platini to have the money which was illegally misappropriated repaid to FIFA," the soccer body's lawyer, Catherine Hohl-Chirazi, said in a statement, "so it can be used for the sole purpose for which it was originally intended — football."