By Andrew Warshaw
December 11 – Michel Platini’s hopes of running for FIFA president have suffered a potentially fatal blow, as has his entire footballing future, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) refused to lift his interim ethics suspension.
The UEFA president, the most powerful voice in European football, was hoping his appeal to sport’s highest court would succeed so that he could make an 11th hour appearance at today’s year-end session of his executive committee and, more importantly, take centre stage at tomorrow’s Euro 2016 draw in Paris and resume campaigning to take over from Sepp Blatter.
But after being rebuffed by the CAS, which ruled the suspension should stand ahead of a final ruling, Platini will have to miss tomorrow’s draw in his own backyard and will be bitterly disappointed as well as anxious about ultimately losing his UEFA presidency and having no role to play in football for the foreseeable future.
Platini was provisionally suspended for 90 days over allegations that he accepted a ‘disloyal payment’ of SFr2 million from FIFA, authorised by Blatter, in February 2011. The issue came to light after Swiss police opened a criminal investigation against Blatter, who is also provisionally suspended, and questioned Platini as a “person between a witness and a suspect” .
Both parties say they had a “gentleman’s agreement” over the payment which was for work Platini carried out on behalf of Blatter between 1999 and 2002 when he was a special adviser. But the money was not paid until nine years later – a few months before Blatter was re-elected FIFA president when he ran unopposed after Platini decided not to stand.
Ethics investigators, who handed down the initial 90-day suspensions, have recommended sanctions for both Platini and Blatter. This could be anything from six to seven years to a life ban. The file is believed to claim the pair violated four ethics code breaches including conflict of interest and false accounting by not reporting the payment until four years ago.
Announcing its judgement, CAS said its three-man panel of judges was unanimous and that the 90-day suspension “does not cause irreparable harm to Michel Platini at this point in time.”
The suspension technically expires on January 5 and CAS made a point of requesting FIFA’s ethics committee not to extend it by a further 45 days, permissible under the rules. However, this has never been the intention of ethics chiefs who are keen to bring about a quick resolution of the case before the FIFA presidential election on February 26.
Platini and his lawyers now have one last chance to clear his name when his full case is heard next Friday by FIFA’s ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert. If that fails too, Platini will almost certainly be back before CAS earlier next year after first going to FIFA’s own appeals panel.
Even if he wins on appeal, he will have to pass a strict integrity check by FIFA to be declared an official presidential candidate. But his prospects are looking increasingly bleak and UEFA will surely now have to consider holding an electoral Congress in the event Platini is further banned just before Christmas.
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