Michel Platini, president of UEFA when the 2018 World Cup was awarded to Russia, would have received a work of Pablo Picasso from a Russian oligarch, according to press reports citing telephone tapping of the ex-leader, who makes public on Tuesday a complaint once morest Gianni Infantino, boss of Fifa.
Wiretaps from 2017 revealed by Mediapart on Monday as part of the judicial investigation opened by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) on the awarding in 2010 of the 2018 and 2022 Worlds, at the time of the presidency Platini at UEFA, throw the 66-year-old French leader into trouble.
The latter acknowledged in a conversation with his wife having received a “picture“of a certain”Ouchmanov“, who might be, according to Mediapart, the oligarch Alicher Ousmanov, currently under European Union sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Asked by AFP on this file, the entourage of Michael Platini did not respond.
With the daily newspapers Le Monde and l’Equipe, the entourage of Platini acknowledged on Monday that the leader had received a “lithography” from Picasso from M. Ousmanov in 2016 for his 61st birthday, not a painting.
On Tuesday, the former leader of the European Confederation counter-attacked on another file, by making public the filing of a complaint in Paris in November 2021 once morest Infantino for “active influence peddling” and once morest Marco Villingerformer legal director of Fifa, for “complicity in active influence peddling“.
The Paris prosecutor’s office registered this complaint on November 16, according to the receipt of which AFP obtained a copy, without it being known at this stage what action was taken.
The ex-N.10 of the Blues has been opposed frontally for several years to Infantino and his entourage, whom he suspects of having ousted him from the race for the presidency of Fifa in 2015 by alerting the Swiss prosecutor’s office to a suspicious payment of 2 million Swiss francs (1.8 million euros), produced by Fifa on the orders of its president Sepp Blatter to the attention of the French in 2011, without written justification.
In that case, Michael Platini and Sepp Blatter were indicted in Switzerland in November 2021 for several offenses including fraud and are heading for trial. The two men insist that it is a remainder of salary for work as an adviser dating back to the period 1999-2002.
Elected in 2016 at the helm of Fifa, Infantino has been targeted since July 2020 by criminal proceedings in Switzerland for “incitement to abuse of authority“, to the “breach of official secrecy” and to “obstruction of criminal proceedings“.
