Blatter loses appeal to FIFA, still on hook for other probes
GENEVA — Sepp Blatter lost his appeal Monday against a six-year ban by FIFA, and now has more serious legal cases lined up against him.
Blatter said in a statement it was “difficult” to accept the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s verdict, but that “the way the case progressed, no other verdict could be expected.”
The former FIFA president, who was banned for approving a $2 million payment to Michel Platini in 2011, said he will accept the decision. He could have pursued a further appeal at Switzerland’s supreme court.
“I have experienced much in my 41 years in FIFA. I mostly learned that you can win in sport, but you can also lose,” Blatter said. “Nevertheless I look back with gratitude to all the years, in which I was able to realize my ideals for football and serve FIFA.”
The verdict ends Blatter’s hopes of becoming honorary president of the soccer body he left in disgrace in February. He must also pay FIFA a fine of $49,500.
Still, his legal problems are far from over.
Blatter faces a separate FIFA ethics investigation into suspected bribery linked to multimillion dollar bonuses in top executives’ contracts. Swiss prosecutors also opened criminal proceedings against Blatter for the Platini payment, and a sale of World Cup television rights.
He also is a stated target of American federal prosecutors in their sprawling investigation of corruption linked to international soccer officials, and an expected witness in a separate Swiss probe of German organizers of the 2006 World Cup.
Blatter denies any wrongdoing.
The three-member CAS panel was judging whether Blatter was guilty of unethically offering a cash gift and conflict of interest with Platini, who was a FIFA vice president in 2011.
Blatter and Platini said the $2 million was uncontracted salary based on a verbal agreement more than a decade earlier. From 1999 to 2002, the former France great was the newly elected Blatter’s presidential adviser.
“The payment amounted to an undue gift as it had no contractual basis,” CAS said in a statement.
Blatter said Monday it was “incomprehensible” that his version was not accepted “in spite of my testimony to the contrary and the testimony given by other witnesses.”
But that explanation of a salary deal now has been doubted by three sets of judges at FIFA and CAS.
The FIFA ethics committee investigated after the payment emerged in September 2015 in the wider Swiss federal probe of FIFA.
Blatter and Platini — whose FIFA presidential bid was stalled, then ended, by the case — were banned from soccer duty for eight years in December 2015. The FIFA appeal committee cut two years from both men’s bans as “appropriate recognition” for their long service.
After a separate CAS appeal hearing, Platini’s ban was reduced in May to four years, ensuring he lost the UEFA presidency.
When Blatter’s case came to CAS in August, Platini testified on his behalf in a 14hour hearing.
It might not be the last court room Blatter sees.
Blatter is suspected of bribery in a FIFA ethics case that was opened in September. It also implicates former secretary general Jerome Valcke and former finance director Markus Kattner, who were both fired by FIFA this year.