By Andrew Warshaw
October 8 – FIFA’s crumbling, corruption-tainted foundations were smashed to pieces today when Sepp Blatter and his would-be successor as president, Michel Platini, were both given provisional 90-day suspensions along with Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s number two who was recently put on gardening leave.
In the biggest single collective list of verdicts handed down by FIFA’s ethics committee, ironically set up by Blatter himself to weed out corruption, South Korea’s Chung Mong-Joon, former FIFA vice-president and another presidential candidate, was slapped with a six-year ban from all footballing activities for his alleged conduct in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process.
The sanctions recommended by ethics investigators for Blatter and Platini had been rumoured from late afternoon Wednesday and picked up steam throughout the night. Both insisted via their representatives they had not been informed of any ruling – a pre-requisite before any official announcement is made.
But less than 24 hours later, German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert’s adjudicatory chamber issued the ground-breaking verdicts which, though technically a means of ensuring no conflicts of interest take place during ongoing investigations into allegations against any of those suspended, effectively bring an inglorious end to Blatter’s often tempestuous 17-year reign as head of world football’s governing body.
Just as significantly, the suspension of Platini means the UEFA president will almost certainly have to ditch his bid to take over from Blatter at the presidential election in late February since the deadline for nominations is October 26.
Blatter, meanwhile, will not be able to chair the scheduled December meeting of his executive committee. That is, unless both men somehow manage to overturn the rulings against them. All four of those barred can go to the FIFA appeals committee and, if rejected, to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. But this takes time and Blatter’s high-powered legal team will presumably be exploring every avenue to try and allow him to continue running the show until he steps down on February 26.
The provisional suspensions of arguably the three most powerful men in world football represents by far the most damaging blow to FIFA since the corruption scandal exploded with the arrests in Zurich last May, just before the FIFA Congress, of those seven high-profile football figures as part of the US investigation into $150 million of alleged wire fraud and racketeering. It was that which prompted Blatter’s reluctant decision to step down prematurely in February, just seven months into his fifth term.
In a statement, Eckert’s office said he had “provisionally banned FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter, UEFA President and FIFA Vice-President Michel Platini, and FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke (who has already been put on leave by his employer FIFA) for a duration of 90 days.”
“The duration of the bans may be extended for an additional period not exceeding 45 days. The former FIFA Vice-President Chung Mong-joon has been banned for six years and fined CHF 100,000. During this time, the above individuals are banned from all football activities on a national and international level. The bans come into force immediately.”
Although Cornel Borbely is head of FIFA’s investigatory chamber, the investigation into Blatter is being carried out by fellow member Robert Torres of Guam and into Michel Platini by Vanessa Allard of Trinidad and Tobago.
The statement revealed that proceedings against Chung were opened back in January and that he had been found guilty of infringing five articles of FIFA’s ethics code: 13 (General rules of conduct), 16 (Confidentiality), 18 (Duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting), 41 (Obligation of the parties to collaborate) and 42 (General obligation to collaborate). Reports had earlier suggested Chung would be banned for 15 or even 19 years but he will still have to ditch his FIFA presidential plans.
Although he recently rejected calls by four front-line sponsors to step down immediately, Blatter has been clinging to power ever since the Swiss attorney general opened criminal proceedings against him last month for allegedly selling World Cup TV rights for well below their true value.
He is also accused of making a “disloyal payment” of SFr2 million to Platini in February 2011 for work the Frenchman carried out between 1999 and 2002 when he was Blatter’s technical advisor. Both are adamant the payment was above board but the ethics committee may take a different view of the nine-year gap, still not fully explained, before Platini apparently received the money.
Shortly before the Swiss attorney office pounced on Blatter and Platini, Valcke, FIFA’s secretary-general for eight years, was relieved of his duties by FIFA after being implicated in an alleged scheme to sell World Cup tickets for above face value. He has described the allegations as “fabricated and outrageous” but he, too, has now been provisional suspended by the ethics committee.
In addition to the tickets fiasco, Valcke has faced considerable scrutiny after being caught up in the infamous $10 million payment paid by South Africa, ostensibly as a donation to the African diaspora in the Caribbean as part of South Africa’s 2010 World Cup legacy programme but which ended up in the hands of former Concacaf president Jack Warner who was recently banned for life.
The money is said to have been transferred to Warner in 2008 from a FIFA bank account following a request to Valcke from the South African Football Association. Valcke has vehemently denied he did anything wrong saying he went through normal channels of protocol and was acting on the request of the South African authorities.
What happens now at the head of both FIFA and UEFA is as complicated as it is unpalatable. In theory, with Blatter suspended, Issa Hayatou, FIFA’s senior vice-president and head of the African confederation, should take over as interim president. But Hayatou represents the old guard just as much, a man himself tainted with corruption over the ISL scandal more than a decade ago and a man who recently forced through a change to the statutes of his own confederation so that he could remain at the helm.
The situation at UEFA, where Platini may now have to reconsider his decision not to stay on, is equally unsavoury. The most senior of its vice-presidents is Spain’s long-serving chief Angel Villar Llona, considered one of the most conservative and anti-reformist of all senior European footballing officials. Not only that. As the head of Spain-Portugal bid for the 2018 World Cup, he is also understood to be one of those still being investigated by the ethics committee over the entire bid process amid alleged accusations of collusion and skulduggery. Hardly an ideal state of affairs.