DPA/Berlin
Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini face what could be the last chance to save their football careers, in hearings at FIFA’s ethics committee adjudicatory chamber today and tomorrow which only Blatter is set to attend.
The ethics body chaired by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert will determine the fate of the FIFA president Blatter and UEFA boss Platini in connection with a “disloyal payment” of 2 million dollars Platini received in 2011 for work done for FIFA between 1998 and 2002.
The investigatory chamber of the ethics committee submitted its reports including “requests for sanctions” to Eckert’s body in late November.
Eckert is expected to publish a verdict on Monday (December 21), with Blatter and Platini reportedly facing lengthy bans, if not life bans.
Remarks from investigatory chamber spokesman Andreas Bantel prompted Platini not to appear himself before the committee because Bantel had shown “a disregard for the presumption of innocence” when he was quoted as saying in what he later named an unauthorised interview that Blatter and Platini can expect long bans.
A statement from his lawyers yesterday also spoke of Platini’s “outrage at a procedure he considers only political to prevent him from running for the FIFA presidency.”
The adjudicatory chamber meanwhile insisted that Platini would get a fair trial even if he is only represented by his legal team tomorrow.
Blatter, for his part, compared the probe to “the inqusition” in a letter he sent to all 209 FIFA member federations but is expected to appear before the judges today.
Blatter and Platini were suspended by the ethics committee on October 8, after the Swiss Attorney General two weeks earlier announced the opening of criminal proceedings against Blatter. Platini was named “a person asked to provide information” by the authorities.
Blatter has presided over FIFA since 1998 and said four days after his May 29 re-election for a fifth term that he would hand back his mandate at an extraordinary FIFA congress set for February 26.
Platini, the UEFA boss since 2007, intends to run for his succession and has handed in the necessary documents but owing to the suspension the mandatory integrity check is yet to be carried out.
Blatter, 79, wants to end his role as a top man in world football after more than three decades on his own terms by chairing the congress. The 60-year-old former France captain Platini meanwhile would cap his career as an official with the FIFA top job.
Blatter was Platini’s mentor in the past but the two have since fallen out, with Platini urging Blatter in vain not to seek another term at the May congress.
Both concede that no written agreement was made about the payment but that they had struck a verbal agreement.
An internal UEFA document from 1998 allegedly mentions possible work done for FIFA by Platini and a position of sports director but it remains unclear why Platini received the money nine years later.
Former UEFA president Lennart Johansson told yesterday’s edition of Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter Johansson he has been asked to testify in the probe but has “no recollection” this was discussed in 1998.
“I approached all who were present. Blatter was in Stockholm but did not attend the UEFA executive meeting. There was no mention that he (Platini) would get a position as a sports director with FIFA.”
The payment in 2011 came in the same year of the FIFA presidential elections in which Platini’s UEFA backed Blatter against Mohammed bin Hammam who withdrew a few days before the election and has since been banned for life.
Both men failed before the FIFA appeals committee to have the suspension lifted, and Platini was also turned down at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which however ordered FIFA not to extend the suspension beyond the 90 days and January 5.
The CAS could become involved again if Blatter and/or Platini are banned by the ethics committee, meaning the case could continue into 2016.
Michel Platini
