FIFA looking to ban Platini for life, says lawyer

This could be a big blow to the UEFA boss and his ambitions of heading football's governing body. Michel Platini is already serving a 90-day suspension from football-related activities.

Deutsche Welle, 24 Nov 2015

UEFA's president, Michel Platini, who hopes to succeed Sepp Blatter atop FIFA, could face a life ban from football, according to his lawyer.

Lawyer Thibaud d'Ales said that FIFA's ethics committee asked for the maximum sanction when it submitted its final case report on a payment of 2 million Swiss francs (1.84 million euros, $1.97 million), one Platini received from Blatter. Platini's lawyer said the bid for a lifelong ban was a "scandal" and "excessive."

"This ban is subject to the proof of corruption, but the punishment is clearly excessive," D'Ales told Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. "It's not based on anything in the case."

"The overreaching of the request really convinces us of this commission's total lack of credibility," D'Ales told the Associated Press (AP). "There is not a single tangible element in this case that can confirm the suspicions."

The ethics committee will announce its final verdict next month, FIFA said on Monday, when Platini will face a hearing in front of German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert.

Platini, 60, and Blatter, 79, are both serving a 90-day suspension from FIFA, football's governing body, because of a corruption charge involving the alledged payment. Both had their appeals denied last week, and Platini is taking his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) .

Platini is in his eighth year as president of UEFA. He also worked as a presidential advisor to Blatter from 1998-2002. His current ban from FIFA had so far prevented him from officially applying for the FIFA presidency - in an election due to take place on February 26. A lifetime ban would categorically end his hopes for the job.

dv/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)

FIFA rejects Blatter and Platini ban appeals

A criminal investigation for corruption involving Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini continues. FIFA and its federations have been under scrutiny for illegal activities.

Deutsche Welle, 18 Nov 2015

Suspended FIFA President Sepp Blatter and European football head Michel Platini have lost their appeals against provisional 90-days suspensions by the global football body's ethics committee, FIFA said on Wednesday.

The committee said it had "rejected in full" the appeals made by Blatter and Platini. Both are currently engulfed by a deepening corruption scandal as their sport faces criminal investigations in Switzerland and the United States.

Blatter, who has been FIFA's president since 1998 and Platini, UEFA's president since 2007, were suspended on October 7 after Swiss prosecutors launched a "criminal mismanagement" inquiry against Blatter, who made a two million dollar payment to Platini in 2011 for work carried out a decade earlier.

Presidential chances slipping away

The suspension has been a severe blow to Platini's hopes of winning a FIFA presidential election in February. The Frenchman was a favorite to replace the Swiss Blatter after he announced his plans to stand down in June.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter reacts to
banknotes thrown at him by a comedian.

The sanction, banning him from all football-related activity, means that he is unable to campaign in the FIFA presidential race against the five confirmed candidates, who have already passed the required integrity tests.

Both Blatter and Platini have the possibility of challenging the decision before the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for a final ruling. Platini will take his case to the CAS as it is his only remaining hope for being a candidate in the election.

If he won that appeal, the electoral committee has said it would review his case but, even then, there is still no guarantee that he would be able to stand in the election.

Richard Cullen, Blatter's attorney issued a statement saying that FIFA's President was "dissapointed" by the ruling, and called the lost time in publishing the ruling "inexplicable."

Blatter lawyers statement continued: pic.twitter.com/kmknRHpPSZ

— Richard Conway (@richard_conway) November 18, 2015

Buffeted by a series of scandals over the last few years, FIFA was thrown into turmoil in May by the U.S. indictments of 14 football officials, including two FIFA vice-presidents, and sports marketing executives for alleged corruption.

hf/jil (Reuters, AFP)

Blatter v Prince Ali for FIFA job as Figo, van Praag exit

Yahoo – AFP, 21 May 2015

President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, gives an interview on May 15, 2015 at

the organization's headquarters in Zurich (AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)

Paris (AFP) - Luis Figo and Michael van Praag pulled out of the race for the FIFA presidency Thursday, leaving controversial incumbent Sepp Blatter in a straight fight with Jordan's Prince Ali bin al Hussein.

Former Portuguese international captain Figo withdrew with a bitter broadside at the contentious election campaign.

"I do not fear the ballot box, but I will not go along with nor will I give my consent to a process which will end on May 29 and from which soccer will not emerge the winner," Figo wrote on his Facebook page.

President of the Royal Dutch Football

 Association Michael van Praag (R), 

and FIFA Vice-President, Jordan's

 Prince Ali bin al-Hussein give a press

 conference in Amsterdam, on 

May 21, 2015 (AFP Photo/Koen

van Weel)

"My decision is made, I will not stand in what is being called an election for the FIFA presidency."

Dutch FIFA presidential candidate van Praag also announced he was dropping his bid, saying he will back Prince Ali instead in the vote on May 29.

"After thorough deliberation and reflection with different involved parties and stakeholders, Michael van Praag decided to withdraw his candidacy to become the next FIFA president," his public relations team said in a statement.

Van Praag will now "join forces with presidential candidate Prince Ali bin al Hussein," said the statement, issued from Amsterdam.

Figo used his Facebook announcement to condemn what he believes are double-standards in football's global ruling bodies.

"I have seen with my own eyes federation presidents who, after one day comparing FIFA leaders to the devil, then go on stage and compare those same people with Jesus Christ. Nobody told me about this. I saw it with my own eyes," he wrote.

"The candidates were prevented from addressing federations at congresses while one of the candidates always gave speeches on his own from the rostrum.

"Does anyone think it's normal that an election for one of the most relevant organizations on the planet can go ahead without a public debate?

'Nepotism, corruption'

"Does anyone think it's normal that one of the candidates doesn't even bother to present an election manifesto that can be voted on May 29? Shouldn't it be mandatory to present such a manifesto so that federation presidents know what they're voting for?"

Van Praag, a former Ajax chairman announced his candidacy in January, saying he wanted to modernise the world governing body "which has lost all credibility."

FIFA had become ridden with suspicion, conflicts of interest and allegations of nepotism and corruption, Van Praag said at the time.

Van Praag, Prince Ali and Figo were all campaigning for change following scandals including over the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

Observers said Prince Ali stood the best chance to unseat Blatter because the Jordanian had a better campaign budget and contacts within FIFA, having served on its executive committee since 2011.

Luis Figo used his Facebook announcement to condemn what he believes are

double-standards in football's global ruling bodies (AFP Photo/Mohammed Al-Shaikh)

Late last month both Van Praag and Figo left open the possibility of a strategic withdrawal in Prince Ali's favour to unite the vote, while speaking at an Asian Football Confederation congress in Bahrain.

Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that Van Praag, Prince Ali and Figo met last week in Geneva to assess the candidates' race.

"Prince Ali is believed to have had the most support after months of campaigning," the Dutch daily tabloid said.

It added that should Figo throw his weight behind Prince Ali, he could bring "some six votes from former Portuguese colonies on the Blatter-minded African continent with him."

Blatter, 79, is a strong favourite to win a fifth term at the head of the world's most powerful sporting federation.

The election will be held at the FIFA Congress in Zurich on May 29.

The winner will need a majority from FIFA's 209 member federations. Blatter has received strong public backing from nearly every regional confederation except Europe's UEFA.

Switzerland targets corruption in sports with 'FIFA bill'

Yahoo – AFP, David Courbet, 12 Dec 2014

FIFA, based in Switzerland, has been at the centre of claims of corruption over
its decision to grant Qatar the 2022 World Cup (AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)

Geneva (AFP) - Swiss deputies on Friday passed a law making it easier to bring corruption charges against the leaders of international sporting bodies such as FIFA which have faced years of sleaze allegations.

The law will affect about 60 multi-billion dollar sporting federations, including football's governing body and the International Olympic Committee, based in Switzerland and has become known as "Lex FIFA", or the FIFA law.

The legislation makes the chiefs of sporting federations "politically exposed persons," alongside political dictators, for whom an allegation of money laundering or corruption will trigger judicial proceedings.

"With this law, corruption in sport will become a crime. It's the first step towards cleaning up sport," Roland Buchel, a lawmaker with the populist Swiss People's Party who led a four-year campaign for the bill, told AFP.

The law is in response to years of allegations of corruption against sporting bodies, including FIFA.

Football's global body, which is based in Zurich, has been at the centre of controversy over its decision to grant the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

FIFA and Qatar have denied any wrongdoing.

But the governing body's executive will vote next week on whether to release the full report of corruption inquiry.

Federation chiefs had been exempt from Swiss laws on money laundering, which were based on measures drawn up by the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force.

The new lawl, under which banks will have to flag any suspect payments, brings sports officials -- and their relatives -- into line with politicians.

"It sends a clear message to the world, that officials must accept responsibility," Buchel said.

He said the law should be rubber stamped by the government by April or May 2015.

FIFA and IOC welcome bill

FIFA and the International Olympic Committee welcomed the new law, which was passed by the lower chamber, the National Council by 128 votes to 62 against, with five abstentions.

"As FIFA has repeatedly stated in the past, FIFA supports government measures for protecting the integrity of the sport and tackling corruption," a spokesman said.

The organisation last month published a summary of an investigation into the Qatar bids and Russia's victory for the 2018 World Cup, clearing them of corruption and ruling out a re-vote.

But the author of the investigation, lawyer Michael Garcia, has slammed the summary as "incomplete and erroneous". He has lodged an appeal with FIFA to get a new version released.

The IOC brought in new rules on bidding following bribery revelations surrounding Salt Lake City's bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The Lausanne-based organisation "fully supports and welcomes this important move by Swiss lawmakers -– it is in line with what the IOC already does," its president Thomas Bach said.

The new bill only affects international organisations based in Switzerland -- where they enjoy favourable tax status -- and not regional or national groups.

Buchel said he regretted that UEFA, European football's governing body which is based in the Swiss town of Nyon, was not covered, but said he hoped it would eventually be.

Asked if he feared sporting bodies might now leave Switzerland, he said: "Good riddance."

Germany warns Uefa may quit Fifa if World Cup report not published

• German League president attacks ‘complete loss of credibility’

• Report summary clears Russia and Qatar of wrongdoing

• Investigator says his findings were misrepresented

Guardian, Owen Gibson, The Observer, 15 November 2014

Uefa has called on the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, to stand down and is looking
for a candidate to take on the Swiss. Photograph: Ito Takashi/AMA/Corbis

The president of the German Football League has warned that Uefa’s 54 member nations could take the ultimate step of quitting Fifa if Michael Garcia’s report into World Cup bidding is not published in full.

Dr Reinhard Rauball laid bare the tensions within Fifa over the split between the ethics committee judge, Hans-Joachim Eckert, and Garcia, the US attorney who heads the investigatory arm and spent 18 months probing the race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Garcia has disowned Eckert’s summary of his 430-page report, which effectively cleared Russia and Qatar.

“The result was a breakdown in communication, and it has shaken the foundations of Fifa in a way I’ve never experienced before,” said Rauball.

“As a solution, two things must happen. Not only must the decision of the ethics committee be published, but Mr Garcia’s bill of indictment too, so it becomes clear what the charges were and how they were judged,” he told the German website kicker.de.

“Additionally, the areas that were not evaluated [in the report] and whether that was justified [should be published]. It must be made public. That is the only way Fifa can deal with the complete loss of credibility.”

He said that if the report was not published in full – and Eckert has already said that he will not do that, while Fifa argues it cannot intervene – then Uefa should consider its own position within Fifa. “If this doesn’t happen and the crisis is not resolved in a credible manner, you have to entertain the question of whether you are still in good hands with Fifa,” Rauball added. “One option that would have to bear serious consideration is certainly that Uefa leaves Fifa.”

Rauball’s intervention comes against the backdrop of Uefa’s calls for the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, to stand down, as he promised to do at the end of his current four-year term. Although the Uefa president, Michel Platini, has opted against standing against Blatter in next year’s election, Uefa is continuing to cast around for an alternative candidate to take on the 78-year-old Swiss.

Before the Brazil World Cup, a series of speakers at Uefa’s congress stood up to call for Blatter to make his current term his last, while the FA chairman, Greg Dyke, denounced Blatter for claiming corruption allegations in the media were motivated by racism.

Fifa confirmed on Friday night that it had received formal notification of Garcia’s intention to take Eckert’s summary of his investigation to its appeals committee.

Meanwhile, one of the two whistleblowers discredited in Eckert’s statement, Bonita Mersiades, the head of communications for Australia’s 2022 bid, was scathing in her assessment of Fifa’s handling of the investigation. “It’s an organisation that, in terms of governance, is just a farce,” she said.

“The only people that come out well in that summary report by Eckert is Fifa. [It says] they got their decisions right in respect to Qatar and Russia, and there’s even a sentence and a reference in there that Sepp Blatter ran a wonderful process. It’s almost like high comedy.”

Related Articles:

English FA chief wants Garcia report published - New
Garcia cries foul as FIFA clear Qatar, Russia

Garcia cries foul as FIFA clear Qatar, Russia

Yahoo – AFP, Dave James, 13 Nov 2014

Michael Garcia carried out an exhaustive investigation into the bidding for

the 2018/2022 World Cups (AFP Photo/Sebastien Bozon)

Paris (AFP) - FIFA's probe into the controversial bidding race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups was thrown into turmoil Thursday after its own investigator Michael Garcia complained that a summary of his report misrepresented his conclusions.

Garcia, who carried out an exhaustive investigation into the bidding, slammed an "incomplete and erroneous" version of his report and said he planned to appeal.

Football's world governing body had earlier cleared Qatar and Russia of corruption and ruled out a re-vote for the tournaments despite widespread allegations of wrongdoing.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter in 2010 

announed Qatar as host country for

 the 2022 World Cup (AFP Photo/Philippe

Desmazes)

Garcia, a former New York federal prosecutor, spent 18 months investigating the controversial World Cup race that ended with the selection of Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022.

Garcia's 350-page report, handed to FIFA on September 5, summed up an investigation that involved interviewing more than 75 witnesses and compiling a dossier with more than 200,000 pages and audio interviews.

But he issued a statement on Thursday saying: "Today's decision by the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed in the investigatory chamber's report. I intend to appeal this decision to the FIFA Appeal Committee."

German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA's independent ethics committee, had stated that the investigation had not yielded evidence of corruption and there would be no re-vote on awarding the tournaments.

The report admitted that even though there had been a series of worrying episodes in the bidding for both tournaments, there was not enough evidence to justify reopening the process.

"The report identified certain occurrences that were suited to impair the integrity of the 2018/2022 World Cups bidding process," said the 42-page report.

".. the occurrences at issue were, in the chairman's assessment, only of very limited scope .... (and) far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it.

The England bid team is accused of
breaking rules in efforts to win
support from former FIFA vice-
president Jack Warner, seen here
in 2011 (AFP Photo/Luis Acosta)

"The assessment of the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cups bidding process is therefore closed for the FIFA ethics committee."

The report also said that Australia's bid contained "certain indications of potentially problematic conduct of specific individuals in the light of relevant FIFA Ethics rules."

Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary-general of the Qatar 2022 organising committee, told AFP: "We were confident that any impartial investigation was to show that our record was clean and contains no irregularities."

The report also found no evidence of misconduct related to the Russian bid for 2018, but added that not all records had been available to the investigation.

The computers used by the Russia Bid Committee had been leased and then returned to their owner and destroyed, meaning access to emails was not available.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, a member of FIFA's powerful Executive Committee, told TASS news agency: "I was sure that this is what would happen -- our bidding campaign was absolutely honest.

England bid criticised

However, the English Football Association (FA) was accused of "violating bidding rules" in its attempt to win the right to stage the 2018 event.

The report alleges that in an attempt to "curry favour" with Trinidad and Tobago official Jack Warner, who was believed to control a block of FIFA executive votes, the England bid team contravened bidding rules.

David Beckham (left) and Wayne Rooney

 campaigning for England's 2018/2022
World Cup bid at Wembley Stadium in
London in 2009 (AFP Photo/Adrian
Dennis)

England 2018 is accused of helping "a person of interest to (Warner) find a part-time job in the UK" and sponsoring a gala dinner for the Caribbean Football Union at a cost of $55,000 (44,100 euros).

The FA rejected the criticisms, while Simon Johnson, who led England's 2018 bid team, described the saga as "farcical".

"Before that statement by Mr Garcia, I was saying that it's very difficult to have confidence in the conclusions of Mr Eckert's report and that it looked like a politically-motivated whitewash," he told the BBC.

"Now that I have seen Mr Garcia's statement, I am absolutely convinced that the report is a politically-motivated whitewash."

Series of reform

The report recommended a series of reforms to future bidding processes in an effort to protect the integrity of the sport's most lucrative showpiece event.

These include four-year limits on FIFA executive committee posts, the FIFA Congress, rather than the executive committee, to decide on future venues, a more transparent rotation system and a ban on committee members visiting bidding nations.

In a break with FIFA tradition, the 2018 and 2022 tournaments were awarded at the same time, in 2010, leading to claims of horsetrading in the bidding process.

Facade of historical Bolshoi Theatre

 illuminated with official emblem of 2018

 FIFA World Cup (AFP Photo/Kirill

 Kudryavtsev)

The main controversy revolved around Qatar and how the gas-rich emirate was awarded the 2022 competition which was initially to be played in the summer when temperatures reach the upper-40s Celsius.

Despite Qatar escaping a re-vote, Thursday's ethics committee report still raised serious concerns over its campaign.

The report again probed the role of Qatari Mohammed bin Hammam, a former member of the FIFA executive committee who was banned from all football activity in 2012.

In June, Britain's Sunday Times alleged that bin Hammam paid more than $5 million to officials around the world before the 2010 vote to drum up support for the tiny Gulf state.

However, the report states that payments were designed to bolster his bid for the FIFA presidency in 2011 rather than to manipulate Qatar's 2022 World Cup hopes.

Qatar's decision to sponsor the 2010 Confederation of African Football (CAF) Congress in Angola to the tune of $1.8 million was also brought into question.