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December 12, 2015

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Platini loses CAS appeal over 90-day ban

Source: AP | December 12, 2015, Saturday | Print Edition

MICHEL Platini failed to overturn his 90-day FIFA ban yesterday, with the ruling coming only minutes after Swiss federal prosecutors said they stepped up their criminal investigation into a US$2-million payment he received from soccer’s scandal-hit governing body.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport said its three-man panel of judges was unanimous in ruling against the FIFA election hopeful’s appeal, stating that the former France great would still be able to campaign for president after an expected FIFA ethics committee verdict.

The 90-day ban “does not cause irreparable harm to Michel Platini at this point in time”, the court said in a statement.

Even if the ban had been lifted, Platini was unlikely to have his candidacy — including an integrity check — validated by FIFA’s election panel before the ethics verdict is due, the court said.

Because of yesterday’s ruling, Platini, the president of UEFA, remains barred from attending the European Championship draw in Paris today and cannot resume campaigning ahead of the FIFA presidential election on February 26.

“Obviously, Michel Platini would have preferred get back to his duties,” the Frenchman’s lawyer, Thibaud d’Ales, said. “But he remains very confident that he will be cleared in the end. It’s better to win on the merits of the case than on the provisional ban.”

Platini’s next legal date is next Friday when his case will be heard by the FIFA ethics committee in Zurich. A life ban has been requested by ethics prosecutors and a verdict is expected days later.

Separately, Switzerland’s attorney general announced new moves to gather evidence from FIFA and UEFA in a case which led to criminal proceedings being opened against FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who is also serving a 90-day ban.

The case centers on Blatter’s approval of US$2 million of FIFA money that Platini got in 2011 as salary for working as a presidential adviser a decade earlier. Neither body’s executive committee was told when the payment was made in February 2011, three months before a FIFA presidential election.

Platini’s lawyers said last weekend they had a memo from a UEFA meeting in November 1998 when he had no links to the European body. It noted that he would soon be appointed FIFA sports director and be paid 1 million Swiss francs (about US$1 million).

“Given the latest developments in the case, I can’t see how we can plead our case next week without the ethics committee’s reopening its investigations,” D’Ales said. “Unless they do a rush job of it.”

Swiss attorney general Michael Lauber now has documents which Platini’s legal team says supported the claim that his salary deal — which deferred some payment and was not part of a written contract — was not secret. “The OAG (office of attorney general) served a formal request on UEFA and documents have already been handed over and seized,” Lauber’s office said yesterday in a statement.

Platini was questioned by Swiss authorities at FIFA headquarters on September 25, and Lauber has said he is “between a witness and an accused person”.

Platini and Blatter deny wrongdoing, but acknowledge there was only a verbal agreement which they say is valid under Swiss law. However, FIFA was not required to pay Platini when more than five years elapsed since the work was completed.

Yesterday, the Lausanne-based CAS ordered FIFA ethics court to work quickly on Platini’s case, saying his provisional ban could not be extended by a further 45 days in January. Platini’s guilt or innocence was not a factor in the ruling, CAS secretary general Matthieu Reeb said.

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