Michel Platini has filed an appeal against his reduced six-year suspension from football-related activity to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The Uefa president and the disgraced Fifa president Sepp Blatter were initially banned from football for eight years by the world governing body’s own ethics committee after being found guilty of a conflict of interest and dereliction of duty over a 2m Swiss francs (£1.35m) “disloyal payment” from Blatter to Platini in 2011.
At its congress last week, Fifa reduced the bans to six years for what it called their “services to football” although by then Platini’s ambitions of succeeding Blatter had been blown out of the water while his general secretary at Uefa, Gianni Infantino, stepped in to win the presidency for himself.
The investigatory arm of the ethics committee had itself challenged the eight‑year ban, believing that the 2m Swiss francs payment was corrupt and actually merited a life ban. Platini and Blatter have denied wrongdoing over the secret “gentleman’s agreement” under which the former received the equivalent of £1.3m in 2011 for work undertaken as a Fifa adviser between 1999 and 2002.
Platini and Blatter had both said they would appeal again to the court of arbitration for sport, with Blatter describing his continued ban as “insulting” and “shameful”. He added: “I’m deeply disappointed by the Fifa appeal chamber and the next step is going further to Cas in Lausanne.”
In a statement, Platini said: “The charges against me are baseless, built from the ground up and surreal in view of the facts and the explanations I gave during the hearing. I will go through all the possible appeals, starting with Cas. I will go to the end of my fight to show I’m innocent.”
In a statement on Wednesday, CAS said: “Michel Platini has filed an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the decision issued by the Fifa appeal committee on 24 February 2016.
“In appealing to the CAS, Michel Platini seeks to annul the decisions taken by the adjudicatory chamber of the Fifa ethics committee and by the Fifa appeal committee which lead to him being declared ineligible to take part in football-related activity at national and international level for six years.
“A CAS arbitration procedure is in progress. First, the parties will exchange written submissions and a panel of three arbitrators will be constituted. The panel will then issue directions with respect to the holding of a hearing. Following the hearing, the panel will deliberate and on a later date, it will issue a decision in the form of an arbitral award.”
credit:guardian
