Sepp Blatter To Challenge 8-Year Ban By FIFA

Fallen FIFA chief Sepp Blatter will appeal against his eight-year ban, his lawyer said Sunday, joining fellow suspended official Michel Platini in a fight to clear his name.

“We will appeal it, of course,” Blatter’s US-based attorney Richard Cullen confirmed to AFP in an email.

The confirmation came after FIFA’s ethics tribunal on Saturday revealed it had provided Blatter and UEFA president Platini with the reasons for imposing the ban, clearing the way for both men to appeal.

A lawyer for Platini, who has also been banned for eight years, had earlier confirmed an appeal would be launched.

In December, FIFA’s ethics tribunal ruled both men had abused their positions over a 2 million Swiss francs ($2 million, 1.8 million euros) payment made to Platini in 2011 for work carried out between 1999 and 2002.

Blatter, who has headed FIFA since 1998, was also fined 50,000 Swiss francs while Platini, a FIFA vice-president, was fined 80,000 Swiss francs.

The court insisted there was “no legal basis” for the payment that Blatter authorised for Platini in 2011.

Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales said Saturday that his 60-year-old client had indeed received the reasons behind the ban.

“We’ll read them, analyse them and launch an appeal on Monday,” D’Ales said.

The tribunal did not provide further details of the reasoning behind its decision.

Instead it stressed it had now “fulfilled its commitment to provide the grounds for the respective decisions to Mr Blatter and Mr Platini within the first half of January 2016.”

“After receiving the grounds for the decisions, both officials may lodge an appeal with the FIFA Appeal Committee,” the statement said.

If that appeal is rejected, the two men can appeal further to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the highest tribunal in sports.

At the time of the verdict, both men angrily vowed to fight the bans, which started immediately.

The tribunal decision promises to end 79-year-old Blatter’s four decades with FIFA in disgrace.

It also dealt a devastating blow to Platini’s hopes of taking over as head of FIFA in an election on February 26.

The UEFA president pulled out of the race earlier this week, saying the ban has made it impossible for him to put together a campaign to take on the sport’s most powerful job.

He told French sports newspaper L’Equipe that he no longer had “the time nor the means to go to the voters, to meet people, to fight against the other candidates.

“In withdrawing, I am dedicating myself to my defence.”

FIFA has since last May be rocked to its core by a cascade of corruption charges and arrests that culminated with the implication of the two long considered world football’s most powerful men.

The US justice department has charged 39 individuals and two companies over graft within world football going back decades, in a sweeping prosecution that has sparked an unprecedented crisis at FIFA.

A total of nine FIFA officials were arrested during two raids at the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, on May 27 and December 3, by Swiss police acting on US warrants.

By AFP