Sepp Blatter’s 17-year reign as the Fifa president could be all but over by the end of this week after the investigatory arm of its ethics committee was said to have recommended a 90-day provisional suspension.
It is believed the Uefa president, Michel Platini, who was the favourite to succeed his mentor-turned-rival in February until he too become embroiled in corruption allegations, could face a similar sanction. If confirmed, it would end his Fifa presidential ambitions.
Both have been under extreme pressure since the Swiss attorney general, Michael Lauber, opened a criminal investigation into allegations Blatter mis-sold a World Cup TV rights contract to the disgraced former Fifa official Jack Warner in 2006 and made a “disloyal payment” of £1.3m to Platini in 2011. Blatter and Platini deny any wrongdoing.
The chair of the adjudicatory chamber, Hans-Joachim Eckert, must now decide whether to endorse the decision after news of the suspension leaked on Wednesday before being confirmed by a longtime associate of Blatter. The move represents the latest stage in the slow motion collapse of the Fifa house of cards since US prosecutors sent the organisation spiralling into crisis in May.
“What we know is that president Blatter was told he could be suspended for 90 days. There is no guilt impugned,” the PR adviser Klaus Stöhlker, told the Guardian.
“At least president Blatter has not flown away from his throne but is still in power. It’s a very difficult situation. It’s not good for global football.”
The extent to which Fifa remains mired in chaos is reflected in the fact that if Blatter is suspended then Issa Hayatou, the longstanding senior Fifa vice-president, would take over.
Hayatou was once censured by the International Olympic Committee over bribery claims, which he denied, and recently changed the statutes of the Confederation of African Football to allow him to retain the presidency he has held since 1988.
At Uefa, the immediate replacement for Platini would be the longstanding Spanish FA chief Ángel María Villar-Llona, who also remains under investigation by the Fifa ethics committee for failing to cooperate with Michael Garcia’s investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids. Garcia later quit in frustration with Eckert’s summary of his findings.
Stöhlker said the decision by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee, headed by Cornel Borbély, “put the ball to Mr Lauber” to continue his investigations.
It was Lauber who last month revealed Blatter was facing criminal investigation over the Warner contract and the payment to Platini, whose fate is also in the hands of the ethics committee. Lauber has said the Swiss investigation, which is trawling through 11TB of data and 121 suspect banking transactions, is “not even at half time”.
Blatter was re-elected in May days after US prosecutors alleged a “World Cup of fraud” in a 164-page indictment and charged 14 individuals, including nine current or former Fifa executives, with a series of offences. Days later he promised to stand down in February 2016 and has repeatedly reiterated his desire to remain in post until then.
But if ratified by Eckert, the suspension could effectively end his four decades at the heart of football’s global governing body. Bloomberg on Wednesday night reported that Eckert had had to return home early from the ethics meetings because he was suffering from bronchitis.
Stöhlker, a Blatter loyalist, insisted that his Fifa career was not necessarily over and that Blatter would return to his office to await further news. “He is quiet, he is reluctant, he is fully prepared to take his responsibilities.”
If the suspension is approved, Blatter will technically be free to return in January before the extraordinary congress he has called on 26 February to decide his successor, which will inevitably prompt some Fifa Kremlinologists to wonder whether he has a plan to try and stay in control regardless.
The Guardian revealed shortly after Lauber had dramatically placed Blatter under criminal investigation and questioned Platini as someone “between a witness and an accused person” under Swiss law that both faced possible suspension by the ethics committee.
If Platini’s suspension is ratified it will make it impossible for him to declare his candidacy for the Fifa election by the closing date of 26 October.
The only declared candidates are the Jordanian Prince Ali, who was beaten by Blatter in May, and former Fifa vice-president Chung Mong-joon, who is also under investigation by the ethics committee..
Bahraini Sheikh Salman, also a Fifa vice-president and president of the Asian Football Confederation, is another possible contender. The South African Tokyo Sexwale and the former Brazilian international Zico have also been touted as candidates.
Chung, who was on the Fifa executive committee for 17 years, said on Wednesday that the ethics committee charges against him were trumped up to drive him out of the presidential race.
Speaking at the Leaders Sport Business Summit in London, he also threatened to sue Blatter for more than $100m for embezzlement, due to the fact his rumoured $10m plus salary had never been made public or ratified by the executive committee.
The campaign group New Fifa Now, which has successfully called on four of Fifa’s major sponsors to call for Blatter’s head, welcomed the news but said it was not enough.
“With criminal investigations reaching the highest levels of Fifa, and potential ethics investigations into other Presidential candidates, it once again reinforces the need for a complete ‘new broom’ at Fifa to implement independent reform and essentially to start again,” said a spokesman.
The ethics committee, which now holds the immediate future of world football in its hands but has come in for savage criticism in the past for appearing to be just another arm of Blatter’s control, is also believed to be investigating secretary general Jérôme Valcke.
The Frenchman, Blatter’s former right-hand man, was himself suspended last month following allegations that he was involved in a scheme to sell World Cup tickets above face value.
Longer term, it is the criminal investigations by the US Department of Justice and the Swiss attorney general’s office that will decide the fate of many of those entwined with Fifa corruption down the decades. Both Lauber and the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, have promised more arrests.
Earlier this week, Blatter said the Swiss investigation was outrageous. “This is just an investigation, not an indictment,” he told the German magazine Bunte. “I will fight until 26 February. For myself. For Fifa. I am convinced that evil will come to light and good will prevail.”
Platini was understood to have heard nothing from the ethics committee on Wednesday night. Earlier in the day Uefa’s director of communications, Pedro Pinto, said that Platini, suddenly beset by crisis from all sides, did not feel he needed to explain the payment he received from Blatter any further.
Despite his four-year contract with Fifa ending in 2002, Platini received an extra £1.3m payment in 2011, months before Blatter was re-elected for a fourth term.
“The president currently feels he has given satisfactory explanations to the authorities that are dealing with this case,” said Pinto. “Publicly, he feels there is nothing else to add because he feels he has does nothing wrong and therefore does not need to justify himself publicly at the moment.” On Wednesday night Blatter’s lawyers issued a statement denying he had been informed of any action by the ethics committee but not ruling out the possibility that a recommendation had been made.
“We issue this statement in response to press reports about the Fifa ethics committee. President Blatter has not been notified of any action taken by the Fifa ethics committee,” it said. “We would expect the ethics committee would want to hear from the president and his counsel, and conduct a thorough review of the evidence, before making any recommendation to take disciplinary action.”