By Andrew Warshaw
December 21 – Defiant to the last, Sepp Blatter accused the very ethics committee he helped set up of portraying him as a liar and kicking him out of football without good reason.
In a passionate last-ditch stand after being banned for eight years along with Michel Platini – effectively bringing the curtain on his 40-year career at Fifa and almost 18 years in charge – Blatter was determined not to go quietly, insisting he had never once cheated and had been used “as a punching ball” by ethics investigators.
The 79-year Swiss and his one-time protege were found guilty of breaching a number of ethics clauses, especially conflict of interest, over the now infamous 2 million Swiss franc payment that is also the subject of a criminal investigation by Swiss authorities. The payment was made to Platini in 2011 even though it was for work he carried out as a special adviser to Blatter from 1999-2002.
At a news conference shortly after the verdict was announced, Blatter, who was still under a 90-day provisional suspension, said he would appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, insisting not for the first time that he had done nothing wrong. ‘I will fight,” he said. “I will fight until the end.’
With his face partially bandaged after recent treatment, he addressed the world’s media in the lecture theatre at Fifa’s old headquarters in Zurich,which he had hired as private citizen.
With his daughter Corinne by his side he looked physically far more frail and tired than at any time during countless previous press conferences during his controversial tenure. But he had lost none of his resilience stressing that he had not been found guilty of corruption and that the payment in question had nothing to do with currying favour ahead of his 2011 presidential election victory, as had been alleged.
“I am sorry about how I am treated.. but I am not ashamed,” he said. “”I am sorry that I am a punching ball. I am sorry for football… I am now suspended eight years, suspended eight years. Suspended eight years for what?”
FIFA’s adjudicatory chamber ruled that Blatter and Platini broke ethics rules on conflicts of interest, breach of loyalty and offering or receiving gifts.
“Neither in his written statement nor in his personal hearing was Mr. Blatter able to demonstrate another legal basis for this payment,” a statement said. “By failing to place FIFA’s interests first and abstain from doing anything which could be contrary to FIFA’s interests, Mr. Blatter violated his fiduciary duty to FIFA. His (Blatter’s) assertion of an oral agreement was determined as not convincing and was rejected by the chamber.”
But Blatter hit back, declaring he could only be stripped of the presidency by Fifa’s full congress and portraying the ethics committee as inferring: “He’s (Platini) a liar and I’m a liar. This is not correct,”
Blatter, who turns 80 in March, said he still intends to preside over the FIFA congress on Feb. 26 where his successor will be elected. Presenting his version of events over the disputed payment, he told reporters: “Together with a Swiss lawyer we thought that we had convinced the panel about this situation that was created about the payment by Fifa to Michel Platini for an ongoing contract that was never terminated.
“We are in a so-called oral contract or gentleman’s agreement. This agreement was made in 1998, in France, just after the World Cup. Where Mr Platini said he would like to work for Fifa, I said it was wonderful, he said he wanted 1 million Swiss francs, I said OK we can pay you part now, part later.
“What astonishes me now about the decision of the Fifa ethics committee is that they deny, they deny the existence of such an agreement. It went through the finance committee, the executive committee, to the Fifa control committee and to congress. It was registered, and it has been done in good terms.”
Fifa ethics officials would argue that Blatter has, at best, been economical with the truth. Their statement made it clear that any verbal accord should have been lodged with the relevant Fifa departments, just like the written part of the agreement with Platini apparently was. Besides, under Swiss law outstanding payments have to be completed within five years of being agreed.
Blatter suggested, hardly convincingly, it was all down to an administrative omission.
“The only thing they should have done is to say: ‘Yes if this arrangement existed, you should have put it somewhere in the books.’ I agree to that. But this is administrative and financial proceeding. It is nothing to do with ethics.”
“You cannot condemn someone without valid reason. Now I am suspended ,… but that does not mean it is finished. Ill be back”
We shall see.