While suspended FIFA boss Sepp Blatter’s future looked all the more bleak, European soccer chief Michel Platini, also suspended, hoped a new memo could clear his name in the corruption crisis.
Both of them had been suspended for 90 days in October over two million U.S. dollars payment Blatter approved for Platini in 2011 as backdated salary.
For Blatter, the investigation has gone beyond the controversial payment as the FBI stepped in to probe Blatter’s role in a kickbacks scandal that involved his predecessor as FIFA president, Joao Havelange, the BBC reported on Sunday.
The BBC said they will air a program Monday with evidence that indicates Blatter knew about bribes being paid out to senior FIFA officials in the 1990s by sports marketing company ISL in return for television and marketing rights.
While Blatter was deep in the hot water, Platini and his team got hold of a memo which allegedly showed that the payment from FIFA in 2011 was not a secret by was known by UEFA executive committee.
Platini said the payment was approved by Blatter as backdated salary for work by Platini as a presidential adviser from 1998-2002.
The document, leaked to French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, is an agenda for a UEFA executive committee meeting dated Nov. 12, 1998. At the time, Platini was not a member of the UEFA executive committee and had contributed to Blatter’s successful campaign for the FIFA presidency.
According to Platini’s communication team, the payment is mentioned in a note in the document, which reads: “There has been talk about Sfr 1 million as salary.”
“Contrary to the thesis on which the case is built, this document demonstrates that Platini’s contract with FIFA was not kept secret, and that many people within UEFA and FIFA were aware of it since 1998,” Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales was quoted by the Associated Press.
Both Blatter and Platini denied any wrongdoing and claimed they had a verbal contract for Platini to receive the money while Platini hopes he stands as a candidate to succeed Blatter in the FIFA presidential election on Feb. 26 if he can clear his name.
Blatter and Platini face separate hearings by FIFA ethics committee from Dec. 16-18 in Zurich. Verdicts are expected within days.
*Xinhua Report