FIFA ethics court hears Platini ‘corruption’ case
Figueredo to be extradited
ZURICH, Dec 18, (AFP): A FIFA ethics court on Friday heard corruption accusations against world body vice president Michel Platini who boycotted the hearing.
The French football legend’s lawyers pleaded Platini’s case before the FIFA investigatory chamber.
Suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter argued before the judges on Thursday that there was no proof that a two million Swiss franc($2 million/1.8 million euros) payment made to Platini in 2011 without a contract was illegal.
Blatter spent more than eight hours being questioned.
Blatter and Platini are both already the subjects of 90 day suspensions. Both men face the risk of a life ban over the case.
The verdict is to be given on Monday, according to sources close to FIFA.
Platini has said the verdict was decided in advance and has refused to attend, leaving his legal team to fight his corner.
FIFA’s ethics judges have however insisted that all evidence will be judged fairly.
Platini’s lawyer, Thibaud d’Ales, arrived at FIFA headquarters by taxi without making a comment.
The 60-yearold Platini has rejected any notion of corruption, claiming the suspect payment was part of an oral contract for work he did as an advisor.
Before his own hearing, Blatter strongly attacked the FIFA court, but still appeared in his own defence, accompanied by his Zurich-based lawyer Lorenz Erni.
After the hearing Blatter’s Virginiabased lawyer Richard Cullen issued a statement calling for an acquittal.
“President Blatter looks forward to a decision in his favor, because the evidence requires it,” Cullen said in an email sent to AFP.
“President Blatter behaved properly and certainly did not violate FIFA’s Code of Ethics. This investigation should be closed and the suspension lifted,” Cullen added.
If found guilty, Blatter and Platini can go to FIFA’s appeal committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
As Blatter exited FIFA’s headquarters on Thursday his temporary replacement warned that the unprecedented storm surrounding the organisation may not be over.
Acting FIFA president Issa Hayatou and acting secretary general Markus Kattner issued an open letter which noted that “there may be further challenges ahead.”
Platini
And in a sign of the seemingly ever widening corruption probe within global football, Switzerland said that it had carried out a US request to freeze about 50 accounts in Swiss banks.
A Swiss justice ministry spokesman Folco Galli said “funds in the high tens of millions are blocked.”
Meanwhile, Switzerland will extradite former FIFA vice president Eugenio Figueredo to his native Uruguay instead of the United States after his arrest in the corruption scandal rocking world football, a judge said Friday.
“It’s official, the Swiss authorities have agreed to Eugenio Figueredo’s extradition to Uruguay,” said judge Juan Gomez, who is in charge of the Uruguayan case.
“The Swiss authorities will have until December 30 to complete the extradition.”
Figueredo, the former president of South American federation CONMEBOL, was arrested in a raid on a Zurich luxury hotel in May.
He has been indicted in the United States on charges of soliciting multi- million-dollar bribes from sports marketing firms.
Former Honduran president Rafael Callejas was released on bail Thursday, two days after pleading not guilty in a New York court over his alleged role in the corruption scandal shaking FIFA.
Callejas, president of Honduras from 1990 to 1994 and head of the country’s football federation until August, faces eight US charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering.
The 72-year-old Callejas, a current member of FIFA’s Television and Marketing Committee, was released on bail of $4 million, his son Lisandro Flores — who made the payment in a Brooklyn court — told AFP.
South Korean tycoon Chung MongJoon on Friday said “sabotage” by FIFA’s ethics committee was holding up his appeal against his six-year ban from football.
The former FIFA presidential candidate said the committee was deliberately withholding a statement which he needed for his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Chung said that nearly three months after his ban in early October, the committee had failed to produce the statement detailing the reasons for its decision.
“Even after its decision to suspend me, the ethics committee continues to deliberately sabotage my effort to appeal,” he wrote on his blog, mjfairplay.com.