The Attorney General’s Office charged Blatter and Platini with “fraud, alternatively criminal mismanagement, as well as falsifying a document.” Platini, who was captain of the France team that won the 1984 Euro Cup, was also charged as an accomplice.
Blatter, 85, and Platini were sanctioned in 2016 by six for that payment, made with the approval of the Swiss for work done a decade earlier. Both have denied wrongdoing.
“I look forward to the trial before the Federal Criminal Court and I hope that this story comes to an end and that all the facts are properly dealt with,” Blatter said in a statement Tuesday.
“Regarding the payment of the sum of two million francs from FIFA to Michel Platini, I can only repeat it: it was based on a verbal contract that regulated Platini’s advisory activities to FIFA between 1998 and 2002.”
Blatter said the payment had been delayed because FIFA was unable to pay the full amount and that Platini only made his claim for the money in 2010.
The former FIFA president said the payments had been approved by “all responsible FIFA bodies” and that Platini had paid taxes on the amount “at his place of residence in Switzerland.”
Platini said he had only heard news of the trial through media reports.
“These methods are an extension of the relentlessness of the prosecutor to implicate me unduly in a case in which all my good faith has been recognized. I fully challenge these unfounded and unjust accusations,” he said.