Taking a tough stand against alleged corrupt practices, Fifa banned Sepp Blatter and the longtime Fifa president’s one-time heir apparent, Michel Platini from football for eight years.
While this is considered to a career ending blow for the former, it certainly would significantly delay the vaulting ambitions of the latter.
“Mr Blatter, in his position as president of Fifa, authorised the payment to Mr Platini which had no legal basis in the written agreement signed between both officials on 25 August 1999. Neither in his written statement nor in his personal hearing was Mr Blatter able to demonstrate another legal basis for this payment. His assertion of an oral agreement was determined as not convincing and was rejected by the chamber,” the committee found.
Blatter was fined 50,000 Swiss francs or £34,000 and Platini 80,000 Swiss francs or £54,000, in addition to the right year ban.
Blatter would appeal against the ban and was prepared to take the case to the court of arbitration for sport in Lausanne, said the 79-year-old’s personal adviser Klaus Stoehlker. Platini also said he would appeal, claiming in a statement that he was “at peace with my conscience”.
Corruption charges including money laundering and racketeering were levied on nine senior football officials who were indicted in the US and arrested from the five star Baur au Lac hotel in May this year by Swiss police. Fifa has been thrown in to a crisis since then. Last month, a further indictment followed against a further 16 individuals.
A few days after being re-elected for a fifth term as president, Blatter agreed to stand down in June under huge pressure. Much to the public chagrin of his one-time mentor, Platini quickly emerged as the favourite to succeed him.
Protesting his innocence in a letter to all 209 Fifa members in which he likened the process to the Spanish inquisition, Blatter appeared personally before the ethics committee on Thursday. The nine-hour hearing before Eckert and three other judges was attended to by Platini’s lawyers as the former French captain refused to appear in person for the trial.
The Frenchman complained of ulterior political motives to force him out of the race to succeed Blatter and railed against the ethics committee’s provisional 90-day suspension passed earlier.
However there has been no authentic explanation forthcoming from either of the accused that could definitively explain away why the payment was eventually paid in 2011, a few weeks before the presidential election at a time when Blatter was facing a challenge from Mohamed bin Hammam, the Qatari who himself was ultimately banned over bribary claims.
The payments were related to a period between 1998 and 2002 when the Frenchman acted as a special adviser to the Swiss, both Blatter and Platini have said.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
