By Andrew Warshaw
January 24 – Former UEFA president Michel Platini, a largely peripheral figure in the game since his ban for financial wrongdoing, has decided to take one last stand to try and clear his name by going to the European Court of Human Rights, according to reports in France.
Last year Platini’s appeal against his four-year ban – twice reduced from its original eight years – was thrown out by Switzerland’s supreme court and despite always protesting his innocence he has now been judged by four different bodies to have illegally pocketed $2 million in backdated salary paid in 2011 for working from 1998-2002 as an adviser to then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
Platini and Blatter claimed they had a verbal gentlemen’s agreement but were banned for a conflict of interest.
It was widely assumed that having already exhausted all avenues, Platini would throw in the towel, particularly since technically he can return to the sport in October 2019. But he told le Monde it was “a matter of honour for me.”
“This recourse (to the ECHR) is in the logic of what I have always said: I consider that I have committed no fault, and I am determined to exercise all my rights and to prove my innocence” said the 62-year-old Frenchman.
“I could, a year and a half from the end of my suspension, continue to enjoy life, but I do not want to let go.”
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