The scandal rocking FIFA has been on for too long, with Sepp Blatter at the helm of affairs. Therefore, FIFA’s Ethics Committee has come up with recommendation of a provisional suspension of 90 days for the world football body’s president, Sepp Blatter, who has been under investigation by the Swiss authorities.
This was suggested as members of committee met this week after the Swiss attorney general opened criminal proceedings against the 79-year-old Blatter last month.
Blatter has been accused of signing a contract deemed unfavourable to FIFA and also making a payment considered “disloyal’’ to Michel Platini, who head Europe’s football governing body, UEFA.
Both Blatter, who has run FIFA since 1998, and Platini, who wants to succeed him, denied any wrongdoing.
A final decision on suspension is likely to be made on Friday by Hans Joachim Eckhert, the head of the committee, which is FIFA’s ethics adjudicatory chamber.
“The news (of the suspension) was communicated to Blatter this (Wednesday) afternoon. He is calm. He is the father of the ethics committee,’’ his adviser, Klauss Stohlker, said.
“But this is provisional for 90 days and he is not actually suspended. The committee has not yet made a decision and their meetings continue,’’ he added.
Blatter, on Wednesday, said he was being “condemned without there being any evidence for wrongdoing’’.
The ethics committee had been meeting in Zurich since Monday but are yet to make a decision on Platini.
The investigation is centered on allegations believed to be around a 2005 television rights deal between FIFA and Jack Warner, the former President of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF).
CONCACAF is the governing body of football in North and Central America and the Caribbean.
Investigators are also examining a payment of two million Swiss Francs (about £1.35 million; N415 million) which Platini received in 2011 for working for Blatter.
He claims it was “valid compensation’’ for work carried out more than nine years previously.
Platini has so far, provided information to the criminal investigation but said he has done so as a witness.
The prosecutors said he is being treated as “in between a witness and an accused person’’ as they investigate corruption at world football’s governing body.
Blatter had won a fifth consecutive FIFA presidential election on May 29 but, following claims of corruption, announced on June 2 that he would step down.
He is due to finish his term at a FIFA extraordinary congress on February 26th, 2016.
