LONDON — Sepp Blatter could be facing a 90-day suspension.
The FIFA president’s future was being determined by the governing body’s ethics committee at meetings in Zurich, with Blatter at risk of being suspended after a criminal case was opened against him.
Blatter associate Klaus Stoehlker told The Associated Press and other media outlets the ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber recommended a 90-day suspension for the sport’s most powerful official.
“Blatter has heard that from several sources,” Stoehlker said. “He has not got any message from the committee … and he is perfectly under control. He is going to the office tomorrow.”
Blatter’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, said the president “has not been notified of any action taken by the FIFA ethics committee.”
“We would expect that 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,” Cullen said in a statement.
Abdoulaye Makhtar Diop, a Senegalese member of the executive committee’s adjudicatory chamber, said earlier in a statement that cases involving Blatter and UEFA President Michel Platini were being discussed in Zurich this week.
Ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert will take the final decision on the fates of Blatter and Platini, who were questioned as part of a Swiss criminal investigation last month. Blatter is a suspect but Platini was questioned as something between a witness and an accused person over a payment he received from FIFA in 2011.
Ethics committee spokesman Marc Tenbuecken declined to comment on the cases, despite Diop’s statement.
“We are strictly limited in our possibilities to communicate ongoing procedures,” Tenbuecken said.
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@ESPNFC
