Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have vowed to fight on after Fifa rejected their appeals against provisional bans from all football activity. The decision by the governing body’s appeals committee is a further blow to Platini’s faint hopes of rejoining the race to succeed Blatter as the Fifa president, although the Frenchman has confirmed he will appeal against the suspension to the court of arbitration for sport. Blatter is expected to do likewise.
Platini, the Uefa president, has submitted his candidacy for Fifa’s election but the world game’s governing body will not rule on his eligibility while he is banned. His suspension is due to expire in January but it is understood Fifa’s ethics committee is on track to make a decision on the facts of the case before Christmas, with both men facing the possibility of bans of up to seven years.
The pair had appealed in the wake of the decision by Fifa’s ethics committee in October to ban them both for 90 days, with a possible 45-day extension, while investigations into an alleged “disloyal payment” continued.
Blatter was accused by the Swiss attorney general of making a £1.35m payment to Platini weeks before he was re-elected as the Fifa president in 2011. Platini has argued the payment was for work carried out when he worked for Blatter as a special adviser between 1998 and 2002 but Blatter had told him at the time that Fifa could not afford to pay and he did not want to upset its wage structure.
It soon emerged that there was no written contract for the payment, with both sides arguing it was a “gentleman’s agreement”. Blatter and Platini have denied wrongdoing.
Blatter’s lawyers said he was disappointed by the decision of the Fifa appeals committee and that “noticeably absent from the opinion and these proceedings is any evidence of any improper motivation or purpose for the agreement between Fifa and Mr Platini”. They added he would continue his appeals.
Platini said in a statement from his spokesman he had “full confidence that the Cas will restore all his rights”. The statement added: “The decision comes as no surprise. It confirms that Fifa, through its internal bodies, is conducting a one-sided, unfair and biased investigation against Michel Platini, repeatedly violating his right to defend himself.”
The Fifa appeals committee, chaired by the Bermudan Larry Mussenden, said the appeals had been rejected in full and the decision of the adjudicatory chamber of the independent ethics committee, chaired by the German judge Hans Joachim-Eckert, confirmed in its entirety.
However, itpointed out the ethics committee could still itself “confirm, revoke or amend the provisional decision”.
When the ethics committee hands down its full judgment it could definitively end Blatter’s tenure atop world football and end Platini’s already slim chances of succeeding him.
When Platini was suspended, Uefa resolved to enter its general secretary Gianni Infantino as a presidential candidate on the understanding he would drop out if the Frenchman was readmitted.
Infantino is one of five confirmed candidates for February’s election. The others are the Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman, the Jordanian FA president Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, the former Fifa executive Jérôme Champagne and the South African Tokyo Sexwale.
