Platini questioned over awarding of 2022 World Cup to Qatar

Former Uefa chief detained by anti-corruption investigators

Former Uefa president Michel Platini has been detained for questioning by French police over the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

France’s financial prosecutor’s office confirmed to Press Association Sport that 63-year-old Platini had been detained.

Platini, who has never denied voting for Qatar but has always rejected any claims of wrongdoing, was detained in a suburb yesterday morning.

The Parquet National Financier has been investigating the December 2010 decision to stage football’s biggest tournament in the small but wealthy Gulf state since 2016.

Qatar beat bids from Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States in a vote by the executive committee of world football’s governing body Fifa, but more than half of that 22-man panel have now been accused of receiving bribes.

Platini was head of European football’s governing body until 2015 when he was handed an eight-year ban over ethics breaches that was later reduced to four years on appeal.

Platini and former Fifa boss Sepp Blatter were banned for eight years by Fifa’s ethics committee in December 2015, although a Fifa appeal body reduced that to six years, for a “disloyal payment” of £1.5 million paid by Blatter to Platini.

The pair then made separate appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which upheld Blatter’s sanction but cut a further two years off Platini’s.

Blatter has always denied any wrongdoing.

The French authorities have also arrested Sophie Dion, a former adviser of ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and questioned Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s ex-chief of staff.

Sarkozy’s support for Qatar’s World Cup bid has been the subject of considerable speculation for several years and it is understood the French authorities want to know what promises were made at a lunch at the French premier’s Elysee Palace on November 23, 2010 – 10 days before the Fifa vote.

At that lunch were Platini, Sarkozy, the Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani and Qatar’s former prime minister and foreign minister Sheikh Hamad Ben Jassim.

The French authorities have also arrested Sophie Dion, a former adviser of ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy

Picture: PA. Former Uefa president Michel Platini was banned over ethics breaches.