By Andrew Warshaw
December 18 – It is unlikely to be a particularly restful weekend for Sepp Blatter – or Michel Platini for that matter. After appearing before the very ethics committee he helped create, the FIFA president runs the risk of never being able to return to the building from which he has run world football’s governing body, often controversially, for the best part of 18 years.
Blatter spent eight hours before a panel led by FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert on Thursday – reportedly the first time he had been back at FIFA headquarters since being banned for 90 days – trying to clear his name over allegations of financial misconduct. Now he waits nervously to discover his fate, almost certainly by lunchtime on Monday.
It was Blatter’s word against those of his accusers and after the hearing his legal team made it clear which direction they expected the verdict to go.
”President Blatter looks forward to a decision in his favour, because the evidence requires it,” Blatter’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, said in a statement. ”The evidence demonstrates that President Blatter behaved properly and certainly did not violate FIFA’s Code of Ethics. This investigation should be closed and the suspension lifted.”
Whether that will happen is highly questionable especially since ethics investigators have called for heavy sanctions against both Blatter and Platini, who hopes to become his successor at elections on February 26. The UEFA president was due to have own hearing today though he was not appearing in person and was instead being represented by his lawyers.
Both the veteran Swiss and his one-time protégé risk a life ban if found guilty of wrongdoing over the $2 million payment from FIFA, authorised by Blatter, to Platini in 2011, money that was backdated, uncontracted salary for when the Frenchman worked as Blatter’s special adviser in 1999-2002. Both insist the payment was entirely above board but ethics investigators are understood to have questioned the lack of a proper paper trail. And under Swiss law any outstanding payments have to be made within five years.
If corruption is not proven, the pair will likely still be banned for several years for conflict of interest and possibly falsifying FIFA accounts.
Article 19 of FIFA’s ethics code states that all football officials “shall avoid any situation that could lead to conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest arise if persons bound by this Code have, or appear to have, private or personal interests that detract from their ability to perform their duties with integrity in an independent and purposeful manner.”
In a Swiss television interview last month, Blatter said the ethics committee had no right to remove him . But the committee doesn’t see it that way and charged him after Switzerland’s attorney general opened criminal proceedings against him, partly for the payment to Platini who is boycotting his own hearing out of a belief that the case against him is a stitch-up and that a guilty verdict has already been reached.
Blatter and Platini are expected to appeal, if their hearings go against them, to the FIFA appeal committee and then the Court of Arbitration for Sport which would have to hand down a judgement at least a month before the election.
It is the timing of the payment to Platini that has raised such suspicion, coming as it did months before the 2011 FIFA presidential election when UEFA urged its members to support Blatter against Mohamed bin Hammam. In the end Blatter went forward unopposed after Bin Hammam withdrew following the infamous cash-for-votes scandal in the Caribbean but Platini is understood to have at one point been in favour of bin Hammam after deciding not to stand himself.
In the end, he supported Blatter with whom, ironically, he fell out spectacularly when Blatter decided to prolong his presidency and was again re-elected last May. Only days later, however, he was forced to announce he would be stepping down under intense pressure from the twin US and Swiss prosecutions that led to a spate of colleagues being charged with money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion.
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