Platini’s lawyers said in a statement that the decision of FIFA’s Appeal Committee to reject his appeal against the 90-day provisional ban by the Ethics Committee will force him to resort to CAS, as it is an “independent court that is free of the electoral context and pressures present at FIFA”.
Advertisement
“It’s crystal clear that this staggering delay is the result of an instrumentation aiming at holding back Michel Platini”, Paris-based lawyer Thibaud d’Ales told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Blatter and Platini, who was favorite to replace the Swiss in the February 26 presidential election, were suspended in October, engulfed by a deepening corruption scandal as the sport faces criminal investigations in Switzerland and the United States. “Michel Platini’s appeal to the CAS has been lodged”, the former Juventus star’s lawyers confirmed Friday.
The bans were imposed last month by FIFA’s ethics committee pending full investigations into a two million dollars payment Blatter approved for Platini in 2011 as backdated salary. Platini rendered service as Blatter’s presidential adviser from 1998-2002.
Blatter can still request a hearing from the ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber to challenge the suspension, but Platini has already gone down this route and failed to have the chamber revoke his suspension, and his only option now is to go to CAS.
Both deny any wrongdoing and appealed their cases with world football’s governing body, but have been unsuccessful in overturning the sanctions.
Swiss federal authorities also questioned Platini at Federation Internationale de Football Association headquarters on September 25 and are treating him as “between a witness and an accused person”, according to the attorney general Michael Lauber.
The committee has previously said it wants to conclude the case against Blatter and Platini by 5 January next year, when the 90-day ban expires.
Both men could then face much longer bans if found guilty of contravening FIFA’s code of ethics which, in Platini’s case, would mean he also loses his position as UEFA president.
Advertisement
Blatter could face an ethics charge of falsifying Federation Internationale de Football Association accounts if the $2 million did not appear in the financial accounts during the nine-year gap between Platini’s employment and payment.
