According to the Guardian, Conmebol said that they don’t agree with the decision of barring Platini from football-related activities, insisting that the ban is entirely disproportionate as the UEFA president was not found guilty.
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The French football federation, which has been supporting Platini since the accusations surfaced, said it is considering appealing his suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
FIFA’s ethics committee imposed a provisional 90-day ban on Platini on Thursday after a payment the UEFA president received from the world body became embroiled in a Swiss criminal investigation.
Platini, Lauber said, was interviewed as a “person asked to provide information” – not as a witness, as Uefa said in their initial response.
The crisis has been building since May, when United States authorities announced charges against 14 officials and sports marketing executives over bribery allegations amounting to more than $150 million.
For now, Platini seems to retain UEFA’s backing going into an emergency meeting of the executive committee and all 54 member nations on Thursday.
“I’m a fighter”, Blatter told Schweizer am Sonntag.
Issa Hayatou (left), CAF president leaves his hotel to meet with Moroccan officials to discuss Rabat’s request to postpone hosting the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations due to the Ebola epidemic, November 3, 2014 in Rabat, .
Fifa’s ethics committee is understood also to be investigating whether the payment breached the requirement in Fifa’s ethics code for football people to avoid “existing or potential conflicts of interest”.
The row over Blatter’s suspension had already taken a fresh twist as FIFA’s ethics watchdog rejected the 79-year-old’s claims he was not allowed to give evidence before he was banned, saying he was given “all his rights”.
Both protest their innocence vehemently of any wrongdoing and Platini has so far been backed by UEFA at least who are refusing to appoint an interim replacement. Zen Ruffinen, from Switzerland, was sacked by Blatter in 2002 after criticising FIFA’s governance.
A spokesman for Platini stated: “The president is cooperating absolutely with the continued investigations and feels there’s nothing extra he needs to say publicly for the second”.
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Under Swiss law, Platini should have called in the debt within five years.
