Disqualification of Michel Platini and Joseph Blatter reduced from 8 to 6 years old

The appeal committee of the International Football Federation (FIFA) rejected complaints of the head of the Union of European Football Associations Michel Platini and President Fifa Joseph Blatter to remove them from football activities, but reduced the disqualification of officials from eight to six years old.

At the same time, the requirement of the Investigative Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee on lifelong disqualification of Blatter and Platini was also rejected, the FIFA press service reports.

"The FIFA appeal committee, under the chairmanship of Larry Massenden, partially confirmed the decisions adopted by the Arbitration Chamber of the Independent Ethics Committee on Joseph Blatter and Michel Platini, whose disqualification were reduced from eight to six years old," TASS quotes the statement.

“The appeal committee agreed with the conclusions of the Arbitration Chamber that the available data in the present case are not sufficient to establish a violation of the FIFA Ethics Code. Therefore, the requirement of the Investigative Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee on the lifelong disqualification of Blatter and Platini was rejected,” the appeal committee decided.

Agreeing with the arguments of the Arbitration Chamber, the appeal committee decided that a number of mitigating factors when issuing a verdict Blarter and Platini was not taken into account. In this regard, the appeal committee considered that the football activity of Blatter and Platini over the years deserves proper recognition as a mitigating circumstances, ”the conclusion says.

The FIFA Ethics Committee reported that Blatter and Platini were sent to the motivating parts of the decision to remove football officials for eight years. The decision itself was published on December 21 last year.

The basis for the removal of officials was the transfer of 2 million Swiss francs from FIFA funds to Platini's accounts in 2011. The FIFA Ethics Committee announced that the certificate given by Blatter on the presence of an oral agreement on the payment of Platini was unconvincing. The accusations of corruption from Blatter and Platini were removed, but they were found guilty of other violations of the FIFA Code, including relating to the acceptance of gifts and a conflict of interest.

Platini: "The decision of the appeal committee is offensive and shameful"

Michelle Platini and Joseph Blatter have already stated that this decision of the FIFA appeal committee in the sports arbitration court (CAS) would appeal. Platini expected through the appeal committee to completely cancel the decision on disqualification.

“The decision of the appeal committee is offensive and shameful. This political decision was made by the FIFA administration. I will appeal to CAS and already asked my lawyers to prepare all the documents for this,” Platini said. “I became a victim of a system that had only one goal: to specially prevent me from protecting certain interests that I was going to ask about.

According to the Frenchman, the arguments brought against him are groundless. They are built from scratch and vary with the facts and explanations that he gave during the hearing of the appeal committee.