FIFA has filed a criminal complaint against former president Sepp Blatter over the finances of its loss-making soccer 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’s — in a renovated and rented city center building.
The FIFA World Football Museum opened in 2016 after $140 million of soccer 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 soccer officials.
Blatter committed FIFA to a rental contract with the building’s owner, insurance firm Swiss Life, that requires paying $360 million through 2045 at above market rates, soccer’s world body said.
FIFA said its criminal complaint was delivered by hand to canton (state) prosecutors in Zurich.
Blatter risks investigation at local level while already a suspect in two criminal proceedings opened by federal prosecutors into how he spent FIFA’s money as president.
Those investigations involve FIFA paying $2 million to former UEFA president Michel Platini in 2011 and $1 million to the Trinidad and Tobago soccer body — effectively to disgraced former FIFA vice president Jack Warner — weeks before the Caribbean islands’ general election in 2010.









