By Andrew Warshaw
October 16 – Sepp Blatter has admitted that the SFr2 million franc payment made to Michel Platini which led to them both being suspended by FIFA’s ethics committee was “a gentleman’s agreement”.
Reports have been rife in recent days that there was no written contract for the money which was paid in 2011 for work carried out by Platini, then Blatter’s special adviser, nine years earlier, and that any agreement must therefore have been made verbally.
Both are appealing against their respective 90-day provisional suspensions which have severely undermined Platini’s hopes of moving up from the UEFA presidency to take over from Blatter at FIFA.
But now the beleaguered Blatter has added fuel to the fire by all but admitting to Swiss TV that no-one else knew about the payment, a revelation which could land him in even deeper trouble and wreck his chances of clearing his name in time to return for the February 26 election to replace him.
Speaking for the first time publically about the nature of the transaction, Blatter told broadcaster RROTV in an interview published on Friday: “It was a contract I had with Michel Platini, a gentleman’s agreement and that was followed through on.”
When Platini’s lawyer addressed an emergency meeting of UEFA’s 54 nations in Switzerland on Thursday, they were placed under conditions of strict confidentiality so as not to jeopardise the on-going investigation and were forbidden from discussing details of the infamous transaction with the media. But Blatter, seemingly, did not feel under the same obligation though the TV channel in question did not clarify exactly when the interview had been recorded.
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