Blatter, Platini suspended by FIFA
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FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his possible successor, head of European soccer Michel Platini, have been provisionally suspended for 90 days, the ethics committee of soccer’s global governing body said yesterday.
“During this time, the above individuals are banned from all football activities on a national and international level,” FIFA’s ethics committee said in a statement.
It also handed out a 90-day suspension to FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke, who had already been sent on leave, and banned former FIFA Vice-President Chung Mong-joon for six years and fined him 100,000 Swiss francs (US$103,000).
The moves against the most powerful men in world soccer dramatically deepened the turmoil at FIFA as it faces criminal investigations in Switzerland and the United States into corruption at the highest levels of the game.
“The grounds for these decisions are the investigations that are being carried out by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee,” the committee said.
Swiss prosecutors last month opened a criminal investigation into Blatter over a Caribbean World Cup television rights contract he signed, and a 2011 payment of 2 million Swiss francs to UEFA boss Platini.
The Swiss attorney general has described the position of Platini, a former French midfield star, as being between that of a witness and an accused person.
Blatter has been president of FIFA since 1998 and has worked for the organization for 40 years, starting as a technical director before becoming secretary general under former president Joao Havelange in 1981.
The 79-year-old Swiss told a German magazine this week that the Swiss criminal investigation against him was “not correct.”
Earlier yesterday, Platini said he would fight any decision against him, and slammed world soccer’s governing body.
Valcke, Blatter’s right-hand man for the past eight years, was suspended last month following allegations that he was involved in a scheme to sell 2014 World Cup tickets at a marked-up price. Valcke denied the charges.
Meanwhile, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach has waded into the FIFA crisis, suggesting the body look outside football for an “external candidate” to succeed Blatter.
In a strongly worded, rare intervention into the FIFA affair, Bach placed pressure on the troubled soccer organization saying that change was long overdue.
“They must do two things immediately: they must accelerate and deepen the reform process in order to comply with accountability, transparency and all the principles of good governance,” he said.
“They should also be open for a credible external presidential candidate of high integrity, to accomplish the necessary reforms and bring back stability and credibility to FIFA.”
FIFA’s rules state that to be a candidate for president an individual must have been involved in the game actively for two of the past five years, as well as presenting nominations from five national associations.
Those rules severely limit the opportunities for a candidate from outside soccer organizations.
The only way those rules could be changed is through reform of FIFA’s statutes, which can only be done at a FIFA congress.
The next congress is scheduled to be held on February 26, when the next president will also be elected. Nominations for the post close on October 26.
Bach said in his statement, however, that FIFA needs to do much more than just elect a new president.
“Enough is enough. We hope that now, finally, everyone at FIFA has at last understood that they cannot continue to remain passive. They must act swiftly to regain credibility because you cannot forever dissociate the credibility of FIFA from the credibility of football.
“FIFA must realize that this is now about more than just a list of candidates. This is also a structural problem and will not be solved simply by the election of a new president,” he said.
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