By Andrew Warshaw
December 7 – A leaked memo published in a French newspaper on Sunday should clear Michel Platini’s name and allow him to bid for the FIFA presidency in February, according to his legal team.
Platini and FIFA president Sepp Blatter are fighting their respective 90-day suspensions over allegations of an unauthorised “disloyal payment” of SFr2 million made to Platini in 2011 for work carried out several years earlier.
Both face possible life bans and are due to have separate hearings in front of FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert next week to explain the payment which was approved by Blatter as backdated salary for Platini at a time when he was a strategic adviser to the outgoing Swiss.
Le Journal du Dimanche says the memo was presented to the UEFA executive committee members in Stockholm on November 1998 and mentioned that Platini was being paid SFr1 million a year for work he was doing for FIFA.
Platini’s lawyers claim this proves the payment was totally above board even though Platini was not a member of the UEFA exco at the time, let alone its president.
“Contrary to the thesis on which the case is built, this document demonstrates that Platini’s contract with FIFA was not kept secret, and that many people within UEFA and FIFA were aware of it since 1998,” Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales said.
Until recently, Platini was regarded by many as the man to lead football’s world governing body out of its worst ever corruption crisis. Instead the Frenchman, Uefa president since 2002, faces the prospect of disappearing altogether from the football politics landscape.
Both Blatter and Platini say they had an oral contract and deny any wrongdoing. Another of Platini’s legal team, Thomas Clay, described the 23-page document as “important evidence”.
“From the moment that we have proof of an agreement between FIFA and Mr Platini, and of knowledge of this agreement by officials of UEFA, then this (ethics committee) inquiry falls down,” Clay told Reuters.
“For us, it’s very important evidence that Mr Platini has always been telling the truth.”
“It shows that the contract did not have any sort of secret character and that many people, including those in UEFA and FIFA, have known about it since 1998.”
However, FIFA ethics insiders told Insideworldfootball that the document may end up having the opposite effect and could backfire on Platini.
“The relevant body to declare such information to is FIFA, not UEFA,” said one expert familiar with the case. “It’s totally counter-productive.”
Gerhard Aigner, who was UEFA general secretary at the time, denied any knowledge of the dubious payment being revealed to his exco. “I cannot imagine that there was such a paper,” Aigner told the German news agency SID. “Why would UEFA care about his private affairs? Platini was not a member of the UEFA exco at the time.”
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