The China Mail - Platini switches to French courts in long-running FIFA feud

In a statement sent to AFP four days before the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, 70-year-old Platini, who ran the 1998 edition in France, said his lawyers had filed two complaints in French courts.

The statement said the French justice system "is tasked with fully uncovering the conspiracy hatched against French soccer player Michel Platini to prevent him from assuming the FIFA presidency that had been promised to him".

When Sepp Blatter fell as president of the governing body of world football in 2015, Platini, the head of European governing body UEFA, stepped forward as the most likely successor.

But the former France captain and coach was quickly submerged in the widening scandal. Instead his deputy at UEFA, Infantino, grabbed the FIFA presidency, starting a long-running vendetta.

On Monday, Platini named Infantino, 56, as well as former FIFA officials Marco Villiger and Domenico Scala, as targets of his suit. He also asked for former Swiss Attorney Michael Lauber and other officials in that department to be investigated by their French counterparts.

The first of the actions announced by Platini's statement on Monday is a civil suit "to seek compensation for all the damages he has suffered as a result of the tactics used to prevent him from being elected FIFA President in 2015".

The second is a criminal complaint to force an investigation into a "criminal conspiracy to commit false accusation...influence peddling....and aiding and abetting influence peddling.

"This complaint specifically targets the individuals who worked to eliminate Michel Platini from the race for the FIFA presidency."

Platini has previously filed two separate complaints in Switzerland, but neither came to court.

Swiss prosecutors, for their part, launched a long-running criminal action against Platini for a payment he received from FIFA in 2011, but have three times failed to obtain a conviction.

Swiss authorities have also investigated Infantino for his use of private jets and for three secret meetings with Lauber in 2016 and 2017.

Platini reiterated on Monday that he believed he had been wronged.

"The Parisian investigating judge, along with investigative agencies, police, and gendarmerie, are tasked with uncovering and exposing the internal manoeuvres within FIFA, with the possible complicity of Swiss magistrates, to block the path of the three-time Ballon d'Or winner to the helm of world soccer," said the statement.

O.Yip--ThChM