Fifa president Sepp Blatter and Uefa boss Michel Platini have been suspended for eight years from all football-related activities following an ethics investigation.<\/p>\n
The bans come into force immediately.<\/p>\n
At 79, Blatter’s suspension effectively ends his long career as a football administrator.
\nFifa boss since 1998, the Swiss had already announced his intention to stand down before February’s presidential election.<\/p>\n
Platini, 60, was tipped as a future leader of football’s world governing body and had hoped to succeed Blatter.<\/p>\n
A three-time European Footballer of the Year and former captain of France, he had been in charge of Uefa since 2007.<\/p>\n
Blatter and Platini were found guilty of ethics code breaches surrounding a \u00a31.3m ($1.94m) “disloyal payment” made to the Frenchman in 2011.<\/p>\n
Both men denied any wrongdoing and claimed the payment was honouring an agreement made in 1998 for work carried out between 1998 and 2002 when Platini worked as a technical adviser for Blatter.<\/p>\n
The payment was not part of Platini’s written contract but the pair insisted it was a verbal agreement, which is legal under Swiss law.<\/p>\n
German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, the chairman of Fifa’s adjudicatory chamber, held disciplinary hearings for the pair last week.<\/p>\n
Charges included conflict of interest, false accounting and non co-operation, with investigators submitting a file of more than 50 pages.<\/p>\n
Statement – key points<\/strong><\/p>\n “The proceedings against Mr Blatter primarily related to a payment of CHF 2,000,000 transferred in February 2011 from Fifa to Mr Platini.<\/p>\n “Mr Blatter, in his position as president of Fifa, authorised the payment to Mr Platini which had no legal basis in the written agreement signed between both officials on 25 August 1999.<\/p>\n “Neither in his written statement nor in his personal hearing was Mr Blatter able to demonstrate another legal basis for this payment.<\/p>\n “His assertion of an oral agreement was determined as not convincing and was rejected by the chamber…<\/p>\n “Mr Platini’s assertion of an oral agreement was determined as not convincing and was rejected by the chamber.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fifa president Sepp Blatter and Uefa boss Michel Platini have been suspended for eight years from all football-related activities following an ethics investigation. The bans come into force immediately. At 79, Blatter’s suspension effectively ends his long career as a football administrator. Fifa boss since 1998, the Swiss had already announced his intention to stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":175943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-175942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/175943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}