Sepp Blatter has been given a new
ban of six years and eight months from football, the game’s global governing
body has announced.
The former FIFA president Blatter was originally banned for
eight years, reduced to six, in 2015 over breaches relating to a "disloyal
payment" to ex-UEFA chief Michel Platini.
That suspension is up in October of this year, although the
85-year-old will now be barred from all football activities for a further eight
years due to "various violations" of FIFA's code of ethics.
Adjudicatory chamber of the independent Ethics Committee sanctions Mr Joseph S. Blatter and Mr Jérôme Valcke: https://t.co/riqpjyPzqS
— FIFA Media (@fifamedia) March 24, 2021
Jerome Valcke, the former FIFA general secretary who is
banned from football until October 2025, has been given the same punishment on
those grounds.
A statement issued by FIFA read: "The investigations
into Messrs Blatter and Valcke covered various charges, in particular
concerning bonus payments in relation to FIFA competitions that were paid to
top FIFA management officials, various amendments and extensions of employment
contracts, as well as reimbursement by FIFA of private legal costs in the case
of Mr Valcke.
"As the previous bans from taking part in all
football-related activity imposed on Messrs Blatter and Valcke by the
independent ethics committee in 2015 and 2016 have not yet been purged, the
bans notified today will only come into force upon the expiry of the previous
bans."
In the written reasons covering the decision of the
adjudicatory chamber of the ethics committee, FIFA said Blatter's breaches
included "accepting and receiving extraordinary bonuses" of 23m Swiss
francs, "as a result of the conflict of interest created by the allocation
and execution of extraordinary bonus payments between limited top-ranking FIFA
officials" between 2010 and 2014.
The investigation highlighted a scheme through which
Blatter, Valcke, the late former Argentinian Football Association (AFA)
president Julio Grondona and ex-FIFA finance director Markus Kattner were
"allowing themselves to obtain extraordinary benefits with minimum
effort".
"This vicious circle saw three of them (Blatter, Grondona and Valcke) signing the amendment contracts of the others and approving the respective extraordinary bonuses, while the fourth (Kattner) was in charge of implementing the payment of such bonuses (as well as of keeping the matter "off the books", by not reflecting the bonuses in the FIFA financial statements and not reporting them to the FIFA auditors)," the verdict read.
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