Sepp Blatter
FIFA has filed a criminal complaint against former President Sepp Blatter over the finances of its loss-making football museum in Zurich.
FIFA said on Tuesday it suspected “criminal mismanagement by FIFA’s former management and companies appointed by them” to work on the museum—long seen as a pet project of Blatter—in a renovated and rented city centre building.
The FIFA World Football Museum opened in 2016 after $140 million of FIFA’s money was spent refurbishing the 1970s office building to also include 34 rental apartments.
It was intended to open around May 2015, when Blatter won a fifth presidential election, but was delayed until after he left office under pressure from American and Swiss investigations of international football officials.
Blatter committed FIFA to a rental contract with the building’s owner, insurance firm – Swiss Life, which required paying $360 million through 2045 at above market rates, football’s world body said.
“That audit revealed a wide range of suspicious circumstances and management failures, some of which might be criminal in nature and which therefore needed to be properly investigated by the relevant authorities,” FIFA deputy secretary general for administration Alasdair Bell said in a statement.
The Zurich prosecution office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The allegations are baseless and are vehemently denied,” Blatter’s lawyer, Lorenz Erni, said in a statement.
Those investigations involve FIFA paying $2 million to former UEFA President Michel Platini in 2011 and $1 million to the Trinidad and Tobago football body—effectively to former FIFA Vice-President Jack Warner—weeks before the Caribbean islands’ general election in 2010.
The museum had made a loss each year including $50 million in 2016 that included one-off costs, FIFA said at the time in its financial report.
The most recent FIFA accounts for 2019 show almost $3.5 million revenue from the FIFA World Football Museum and $6.3 million costs for “investment and expenses.” There was a record 161,700 visitors at the Zurich building last year.
In the 2018 accounts, museum revenue was almost $4 million against $12 million in spending.
The FIFA museum was identified closely with Blatter from the time it was announced in April 2012.
His executive committee had already approved $203 million for what was being called “Project Libero,” and forecast to attract 300,000 visitors each year.