End of the road as Blatter’s ban appeal dismissed
BERLIN: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) yesterday dismissed the appeal of former Fifa president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter against a sixyear ban from football.
Blatter, 80, was banned last year by the Fifa ethics committee over a “disloyal payment” of 2 million Swiss francs (R28.4m) to former European football chief Michel Platini for Fifa work done a decade earlier.
The Fifa appeals committee later reduced the eightyear suspension to six years, but Blatter protested his innocence and appealed the sanction at CAS, although there was only an oral agreement about the payment.
But the CAS panel said yesterday he “breached the Fifa code of ethics since the payment amounted to an undue gift as it had no contractual basis.
“The panel further found that Blatter unlawfully awarded contributions to Platini under the Fifa executive committee retirement scheme, which also amounted to an undue gift.
“The panel determined that the sanction imposed was not disproportionate and therefore confirmed the appealed decision in full.”
Blatter acknowledged defeat in a statement, but continued to insist he had done nothing wrong.
“I take note of the verdict of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The way the case progressed, no other verdict could be expected,” he said.
“What I find incomprehensible is that the existence of the oral agreement between Fifa and Michel Platini is still steadfastly negated in spite of my testimony to the contrary and the testimony given by other witnesses.
“A UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) protocol mentioning the agreement is also disregarded,” he said.
“I have experienced much in my 41 years in Fifa. I mostly learnt that you can win in sport, but you can also lose. In this sense I have to accept this decision although it is difficult to follow it, because the principle of jurisdiction – culpability has to be proved by prosecution – was not applied.”
Blatter headed football’s governing body between 1998 until his suspension over the case in October 2015, with Gianni Infantino eventually elected new Fifa president in February this year.
He said in June 2015 he would step down, four days after being re-elected for a fifth term, but amid grave corruption allegations against senior football officials and several arrests in connection with probes in the US and Switzerland.
Platini also took his case to the CAS, which in May reduced his ban from six to four years. The case ended his ambition to become Fifa president and he stepped down as UEFA boss after the CAS ruling.
The payment to Platini is also the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Switzerland, upon which Fifa acted with the ban, and the US corruption probe could possibly also target him.
In addition, Fifa is conducting another ethics probe against Blatter, as well as former Fifa secretary-general Jerome Valcke and ex-Fifa finance director Markus Kattner, on suspicion that they made a joint effort to enrich themselves.
The CAS ruling ends for good Blatter’s four decades at Fifa, where he started in 1975 as technical director, before being secretary-general from 1981 until his 1998 election as president. – dpa