Platini loses again as Swiss judges uphold four-year suspension
>> LAUSANNE: Switzerland’s supreme court has dismissed an appeal by former Fifa vice president Michel Platini against his four-year ban for financial wrongdoing.
The Swiss Federal Tribunal said on Thursday that the ban imposed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport “does not appear to be manifestly excessive”.
Federal judges could intervene if they believed the legal process had been abused when CAS gave its verdict last year.
Platini held little hope of gaining a victory from the Swiss court, according to a statement from the former Uefa president’s lawyers in Paris.
“Michel Platini reserves his rights to continue his fight with other j udicial bodies,” the statement said, without specifying which co u r t s th i s could mean.
The Swiss federal court is the fourth judicial body to find Platini was not entitled to US$2 million in backdated salary that he was paid in 2011 for working from 19982002 as adviser to then-Fifa President Sepp Blatter.
Platini and Blatter claimed they had a verbal agreement but were banned by Fifa for a conflict of interest.
The evidence included Blatter’s attempt to increase Platini’s Fifa pension fund with more than $1 million he was not entitled to.
Platini was initially banned for eight years by Fifa’s ethics committee in December 2015. That was cut to six years by Fifa’s appeals committee, then by a further two years at CAS.
The case removed Platini from the Uefa presidency and the 2016 Fifa election to succeed Blatter, who also remains the subject of a criminal proceeding in Switzerland for suspected mismanagement of Fifa funds.