By Andrew Warshaw
November 26 – Ethics officials have dismissed the suggestion that they do not have the power to remove Sepp Blatter from office – and reject claims that he has not yet received the report into their investigation against him.
Blatter’s spokesman Klaus Stoehlker was quoted as saying yesterday that the 79-year-old FIFA president had yet to be informed of what sanction was being recommended against him and that he was “deeply surprised” to learn of the lifetime ban reportedly proposed for Michel Platini over the SFr 2 million payment made to him from FIFA in 2011 that was signed off by Blatter.
It is assumed that Blatter faces similar charges to Platini which would rule him out of handing over to his successor on February 26. But Stoehlker also said the veteran Swiss was now considering going above the head of German ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, who will announce his verdicts next month. “Mr Blatter was elected by the FIFA congress and only the congress can remove his power,” Stoehlker said.
Ethics officials have been quick to counter this, insisting there is no exemption for the president, either under the FIFA statutes or the code of ethics.
“Everybody is covered by the same code of ethics and by the statutes, there is no exemption for anyone whatsoever from this rule,” a spokesman for the investigatory side of the ethics committee told Insideworldfootball.
Eckert’s office, meanwhile, insists that Blatter’s representatives were notified on Monday that formal proceedings had been opened and that the FIFA president therefore had to be aware of the details.
“The legal teams of both Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini were notified of the opening of the adjudicatory proceedings against them on Monday, November 23,” said an emailed statement to Insideworldfootball. “The notification included the final reports and the request for sanctions as they had been submitted to Mr. Eckert by the investigatory chamber.”
Reliable insiders with knowledge of how the ethics process works make the point that if Blatter was exempt from the rules, he could not have been temporarily replaced by Issa Hayatou during his current 90-day provisional suspension.
“Nobody contested that the senior Vice President became acting president,” said one high-profile source. “According to Blatter’s logic that would not be possible, but it happened. Hayatou became acting president as per the statutes and not one member association opposed it.”
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