World Cup tickets investigation of former FIFA official Valcke closed after 9 years

GENEVA (AP) — Nine years into a World Cup black market tickets investigation, the case against former FIFA official Jérôme Valcke was finally closed.

The Swiss attorney general’s office said on Friday it has decided to end the criminal proceedings into an alleged tickets deal proposed for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Other criminal cases that once implicated Valcke in a sprawling Swiss investigation of FIFA business also have been closed, though one is ongoing at appeal after he was found guilty on some charges and acquitted of others at two trials.

Proceedings against “among others, Jerôme Valcke, in connection with the award of media rights are still pending in front of the Federal Supreme Court,” said the federal prosecution office which, like Valcke separately, has appealed against the second trial verdict from June 2022.

That case, which revealed how Valcke got use of a Qatari-owned vacation home on an Italian island, also involves Nasser al-Khelaifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president, who was twice acquitted in 2020 and 2022 of inciting the FIFA official.

In the tickets case, Valcke was suspended from his job as FIFA secretary general in September 2015 because of allegations made by businessman Benny Alon. FIFA fired him four months later and banned him from soccer.

“This acknowledgement of Mr. Jérôme Valcke’s full innocence is the outcome that was always expected,” his lawyers in Geneva, Patrick Hunziker and Elisa Bianchetti, said in a statement.

Valcke worked from 2007-15 alongside long-time FIFA president Sepp Blatter until both were ousted in fallout from United States and Swiss federal investigations of international soccer officials.

Federal proceedings, later closed without charges being brought, related to payments directed toward former FIFA vice president Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago: A $10 million payment channelled through FIFA from South Africa, the 2010 World Cup host; and a $1 million loan in 2010 later waived.

Prosecutors in Zurich also closed a criminal complaint filed by the current FIFA management relating to its soccer museum in the city that opened in 2016.

The 64-year-old Valcke remains banned from soccer by FIFA through 2032.

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Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press