FIFA: Sanctions recommended for Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini

Ethics investigators for FIFA, the ruling body of world football, have recommended sanctions to be imposed on Sepp Blatter, the organization’s longtime president, and Michel Platini, the head of soccer’s European confederation, the organization said on Saturday.

Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini, who have both been provisionally suspended from world soccer since early October as FIFA conducted an internal investigation into a financial transaction between them, will have the opportunity to defend themselves at a hearing, which is expected to take place in December.

After that, the judge on FIFA’s ethics committee will decide whether to impose the more permanent sanctions that have been recommended.

In the meantime, Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini remain forbidden to conduct any business related to the sport. Both men had appealed their provisional bans; earlier last week, FIFA announced that it had denied both appeals.

Mr. Blatter and Mr. Platini have the option to appeal that decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. Mr. Platini, who is eager to clear his name in order to be eligible to run for FIFA’s presidency in February, has done so, the court said.

Mr. Blatter’s lawyers have not done so, perhaps seeking to focus further appeals not on the temporary ban but on any more lasting sanctions that could be ordered by FIFA’s ethics judge.

The Rise and Fall of Sepp Blatter Scandal and accusations have dotted the FIFA reign of Sepp Blatter.

Both have maintained that they have done no wrong. Mr. Blatter’s lawyers centered their appeal to FIFA on a lack of evidence, charging that the organization had assumed Mr. Blatter was guilty rather than presuming he was innocent and had rushed to oust him.

FIFA’s code of ethics prohibits people of the same nationality from investigating one another, so individuals who are Swiss, like Mr. Blatter, or French, like Mr. Platini, were recused from investigating them.

The investigation into Mr. Blatter was conducted by Robert Torres, the chief justice of Guam and a member of FIFA’s ethics committee, FIFA said. The investigation into Mr. Platini was conducted by Vanessa Allard, a lawyer from the Cayman Islands who also sits on the ethics committee.