By Andrew Warshaw
March 2 – As widely anticipated, Michel Platini has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against his suspension from football-related activity as he seeks to annul the sanction upheld by the FIFA appeal committee last week but reduced from eight to six years.
Intriguigingly, sport’s highest court did not reveal whether FIFA’s ethics committee, which originally banned Platini for eight years, had launched a counter-appeal to increase the sanction. Ethics investigators originally called for a life ban if corruption could be proved.
No hearing date has been set for the CAS hearing but it is unlikely to be before April or May.
Platini was banned for conflict of interest in accepting a SFr2 million payment from FIFA in 2011, a transaction approved by Sepp Blatter who was also banned and has also pledged to go to CAS. Both have constantly denied wrongdoing and claim they had a verbal deal covering the time Platini worked as Blatter’s presidential adviser from 1999-2002 even though the payment in question was not made until nine years later – around the time Blatter was re-elected for a fourth term.
“In appealing to the CAS, Michel Platini seeks to annul the decisions taken by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee and by the FIFA Appeal Committee which lead to him being declared ineligible to take part in football-related activity at national and international level for six years. A CAS arbitration procedure is in progress,” said the CAS statement.
“First, the parties will exchange written submissions and a panel of three arbitrators will be constituted. The Panel will then issue directions with respect to the holding of a hearing. Following the hearing, the Panel will deliberate and on a later date, it will issue a decision in the form of an Arbitral Award.”
Platini had been viewed as the natural successor to Blatter as FIFA president before his suspension forced him to pull out of the race as he focussed on clearing his name. Instead, his number two at UEFA, Gianni Infantino, stepped into his shoes and won last Friday’s vote to become FIFA’s first new leader in 18 years.
Throughout his legal fight with FIFA’s judicial bodies, Platini said he would only get a fair and unbiased hearing at CAS. “This decision is in reality a political decision taken by the FIFA administration,” Platini said last week when his ban was cut to six years. “I am the victim of a system that had only one goal: To prevent me from becoming FIFA president in order to protect certain interests that I was about to bring into question.”
Exactly what those interests are Platini has yet to reveal.
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