Blatter answers corruption charges before Fifa judges
ZURICH: Suspended Fifa president Sepp Blatter appeared before the world body’s ethics judges yesterday to answer corruption allegations as Switzerland announced it has frozen tens of millions of dollars in accounts linked to football bribes.
Blatter, who with vice-president Michel Platini faces a long suspension, arrived at Fifa’s base in Zurich in a black Mercedes with his lawyer. He made no comment as he entered.
Before the hearing, Blatter, 79, wrote a letter to Fifa’s 209 members calling the Fifa ethics commission’s investigators “the inquisition”.
As the hearing went ahead, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, whose country will host the 2018 World Cup, said Blatter should be a Nobel Peace laureate.
“That is someone who should be given the Nobel Peace Prize,” Putin said. “His contribution to the global humanitarian sphere is colossal.”
Blatter is under criminal investigation in Switzerland over a two million Swiss francs (US$2 million) payment made to Platini in 2011 for work carried out about a decade earlier.
Platini’s case will be heard today, but he has said he will boycott the tribunal. His lawyers will go however. Blatter and Platini deny any misconduct. The ethics committee chamber is expected to announce its verdict next Monday. Appeals to a Fifa appeal committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport are then possible.
Fifa has been plunged into several corruption scandals this year, which played a key role in Blatter’s announcement in June that he would stand down when a new election is held in February.
Platini was considered favourite to take over but his campaign has been frozen since he and Blatter were suspended in October over the payment which they insist was legal.
The United States asked Switzerland to freeze about 50 accounts in Swiss banks linked to its massive inquiry into football corruption, a federal prosecution spokesman told AFP.
Federal justice spokesman Folco Galli said “funds in the high tens of millions [Swiss francs] are blocked.”
The Tages Anzeiger newspaper said the figure was between 50 million and 100 million Swiss francs ($50-100 million).