Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter is suing world football’s governing body for “moral damages”, according to a report by BCC. Blatter led Fifa from 1998 to 2015 before being forced out in disgrace amid a global corruption scandal.
Additionally, the 83-year-old has also begun legal proceedings to reclaim his “60 watches” that Fifa have in their possession.
“I’m living in peace now with myself [but] my family has suffered,” Blatter was quoted as saying in the report. “They have suffered more than I have suffered.
“My grandaughter was mobbed in college when she was just 14 and she had to leave the college. She’s now 18. It’s terrible. She just got her diploma, at the university ceremony, but she is still suffering about it. This is life today. This is the world we live in.”
Blatter is also keen on getting some of his prized possessions back from Fifa, including some 60 watches which he claims he collected through his lifetime.
“These are my watches, give me my watches” he said. “It’s important for me. I worked in the watch industry and I made my collection. Forty-one years they were [at Fifa], I could have taken them home, a long time ago. Why are they fighting for these watches? There is no respect, there is no respect by the president [Gianni Infantino].”
Fifa president Infantino is running unopposed in his bid for a second term as the head of world football’s governing body, but that does not mean everyone approves of his job performance.
“I want to sue him,” Blatter said of Infantino, the man he blames for a host of offences both personal and in his stewardship of Fifa, where Blatter worked for 41 years.
In an interview with AFP last month, Blatter accused Infantino and Fifa of failing to return personal items that he left in his old office and of unfairly implicating him in financial misconduct.
Blatter said he wants an admission that he has been “hurt” by Fifa. “Both me and my family, my entire entourage, by saying that this guy was using like a piggybank. This is a question of honour,” he said.
Blatter, who like Infantino is a Swiss national, remains the target of a criminal investigation in Switzerland, but the case has not yet come to court after nearly four years of investigation.
Blatter particularly disputes allegations by Fifa that he received a 12 million Swiss franc ($12 million, 10.6 million euros) bonus following the 2014 World Cup.