I HAD TO WAIT FOR MY CASH
£1.35m was legitimate — Platini
Michel PLATINI last night made a fanciful attempt to explain the extraordinary £1.35million payment for consultancy work undertaken for Sepp Blatter which arrived nine years late.
it threatens to derail the UEFA chief’s bid for the FIFA presidency with him being implicated in the governing body’s corruption scandal for the first time.
in an interview with the French press agency last night, Platini claimed that he had to wait to be paid he was owed because FIFA told him they could not afford the full amount.
however, a docu--ment on the world governing body’s official website reveals that between 1999 and 2002 FIFA had a revenue surplus off £84million.
Platini told the AFP FP agency: ‘i received only part of the agreed salary between 1998 to 2002. this occurred because at the time, FIFA informed me they would not be able to pay me the total agreed amount. mr Blatter informed me when i started my role as his adviser that it was not initially possible to pay the totality of my salary because of FIFA’s financial situation at that time.
‘i never doubted, however, that the remaining amount owed to me would be paid eventually, so i did not actively pursue it, before finally requesting that the outstanding balance was paid in 2011. the fact this payment was made a few months before the FIFA presidential elections is irrelevant since i never had any plans of becoming a candidate.’
Yesterday, Switzerland’s attorney general said he would be prepared to follow up the search of Blatter’s FIFA office by ordering the same kind of unannounced visit at Platini’s UEFA HQ.
michael lauber said: ‘i will do anything — if i can do something — to clear up what’s the real truth and if i have enough elements to go there i could not exclude that i also have to go there.
‘We didn’t audition mr Platini as a witness, we investigated against him in between as a witness and an accused person.’
FIFA’s arch-rogue Jack Warner was banned from football for life yesterday by the governing body’s ethics committee, which described him as ‘a key player in schemes involving the offer, acceptance and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments as well as other money-making schemes’.