Image: Joseph Blatter arrives for the world premiere of “Die Mannschaft” (The Team) at the Sony Center in Berlin November 10, 2014. REUTERS/Hannibal
ZURICH (Reuters) – Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has lodged an appeal against his six-year ban from soccer for ethics violations, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Thursday.
The Lausanne-based organisation said the 80-year-old Swiss wanted to overturn last month’s decision by the appeals committee of world football’s ruling body FIFA.
Blatter and Michel Platini, president of European football’s governing body UEFA, were banned over a payment of two million Swiss francs (£1.4 million) made by FIFA to the Frenchman in 2011, with Blatter’s approval, for work done a decade earlier.
Both men have denied any wrong-doing.
Blatter has vowed to “go to the end of my life to show that I’m innocent”.
Platini filed a similar appeal against his suspension earlier this month.
CAS said Blatter and FIFA’s appeals committee would exchange written submissions, with a three-arbitrator panel to be created before a hearing is held.
FIFA is seeking to turn the page on a long-running scandal that escalated in 2015 when police swooped on a luxury Zurich hotel to arrest soccer officials accused by U.S. federal prosecutors of corruption.
Dozens of people have since been charged in investigations that have spanned five continents.
Swiss Gianni Infantino, the former UEFA general secretary, was elected president of FIFA last month and pledged to refocus the organisation on soccer rather than corruption and litigation.
(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Tony Jimenez)
Copyright 2015 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
