Geneva: 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 Blatters — in a renovated and rented city centre 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 buildings owner, insurance firm Swiss Life, that requires paying $360 million through 2045 at above-market rates, soccers world body said.
FIFA said its criminal complaint was delivered by hand to canton (state) prosecutors in Zurich.
Blatter risks investigation at a local level while already a suspect in two criminal proceedings opened by federal prosecutors into how he spent FIFAs 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.
The museum has made a loss each year, including $50 million in 2016 that included one-off costs, FIFA said then in its financial report.