By Andrew Warshaw
February 17 – Sepp Blatter will find out later this week whether his appeal hearing to clear his name marked his last ever official visit to FIFA headquarters where he has ruled for the best part of 18 years.
Both Blatter and Michel Platini are expected to discover by the weekend whether their respective eight-year suspensions from all football-related activity will stand, whether they are free men or whether they are barred for even longer.
Blatter made a low-profile appearance on Tuesday, evading reporters and photographers on his way in and out of his old headquarters in contrast to the impromptu news conference given 24 hours earlier by Platini who once again protested his innocence to reporters as he left the building.
The pair were handed their bans in December after being found guilty of a SFr2 million “disloyal payment”. If their appeals fail, both are expected to take their fight to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The case threatens to end the careers of the outgoing FIFA president and his one-time protege, who at one stage was the odds-on favourite to succeed him.
Despite his ban, Blatter could defy next week’s election Congress in Zurich as a way of making a formal exit. “After 40 years, it can’t happen this way,” Blatter said in December when pledging to appeal. “I’m fighting to restore my rights.”
Platini’s version of events is that a salary of SFr1 million, then around $1 million, was agreed verbally when approached in 1998 to work for the newly-elected Blatter.
Blatter said there was a contract for SFr300,000, the same as its then secretary general and in line with FIFA’s salary structure, plus a “gentleman’s agreement” for Platini to get the rest later. Under Swiss law, FIFA only has to pay up within five years of any financial agreement. Platini was paid in February 2011.
Ethics investigators say the verbal agreement made between the pair was “not convincing”. The timing raised suspicion since the payment came during a FIFA presidential election campaign in which UEFA later urged its members to support Blatter – who promised them it would be his final term – against Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar. Blatter won unopposed after Bin Hammam withdrew after being implicated in bribing Caribbean voters.
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