Sepp Blatter’s decision to authorise a payment to Michel Platini without a written contract is a “classic conflict of interest”, according to the head of Fifa’s audit and compliance committee.
The Fifa president could be culpable of “falsification” of accounts over the payment of £1.35 million to Platini, the Uefa president, in 2011 for advisory work done between 1998 and 2002.
Domenico Scala, the chairman of the audit committee, said: “If it is true what they are saying, that they had an oral agreement . . . to defer the payment, that payment should have been recorded in the accounts in 2002 and subsequent years. It has not.”
In an effort to make the organisation “more transparent and accountable” after a summer of unremitting scandal, Fifa’s independent ethics committee is expected today to name individuals under investigation. The executive committee agreed to change rules that had previously allowed investigators to give information only on cases where officials have been banned. Sources close to the ethics committee suggest that there are a number of names not previously disclosed.
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The revelation comes on a day when Platini’s dwindling hopes of succeeding Blatter as Fifa president had already suffered a blow after world football’s governing body agreed to hold the election on February 26 as planned. Platini has been banned along with Blatter for 90 days amid an investigation into the £1.35 million payment to the former France midfielder. Fifa will not allow Platini to stand as long as his suspension is running, but he still hopes to replace the Swiss and has submitted his bid for election. Platini may be allowed to stand if he is cleared of any wrongdoing before February.
There had been speculation that Fifa’s executive committee would delay the election, with Platini’s suspension due to expire in early January.
Platini is awaiting the verdict of the appeals committee over the suspension and denies any wrongdoing over the payment. The decision has the potential to harm Platini’s candidacy as he would be unable to campaign up until January. The Frenchman’s appeal, if unsuccessful, would then have to go before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), a process that should be competed by mid-November.
Platini, who has been Uefa president since 2007, had been considered the firm favourite to succeed Blatter as head of Fifa, but with the election to go ahead in February as planned, his rivals for the post now have a significant head start. Those rivals include Prince Ali bin-al Hussein, who was defeated by Blatter in two rounds in June amid the first flowerings of crisis. Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, of Bahrain, is expected to announce he will stand.
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In a further twist yesterday, Sheikh Salman was reported in Kicker, the German football website, to be under investigation by Fifa’s ethics committee for allegedly chairing a meeting responsible for the “torture and detention of around 150 people” in the wake of pro-democracy protests in the Gulf state. He denies the allegations.
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