Zurich : FIFA president Sepp Blatter has filed an appeal of his 90-day suspension from football, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Blatter complained in the letter to FIFA’s judge that he had only found about his suspension after it was made public.
Blatter, who has led football’s governing body since 1998, was suspended by FIFA’s ethics committee as the 79-year-old faces a Swiss criminal investigation. Blatter sent a letter to Hans-Joachim Eckert, the German judge who leads the adjudicatory chamber of the ethics committee, the US newspaper reported.
In it the Swiss official complains of the brusque and unfair treatment he received and demanded a hearing to argue his case in full. The newspaper cited a person close to Blatter who said the FIFA president had learned of the decision to suspend him “only after FIFA had announced it publicly … on his office computer.”
Blatter is under investigation by Swiss prosecutors for criminal mismanagement. UEFA leader Michel Platini has also been suspended pending an investigation, and has already announced his intention to appeal.
Swiss investigators are looking into a two million dollar payment made by FIFA to Platini in 2011.
The Frenchman and Blatter have strongly denied any wrongdoing. A suspension could rule the 60-year-old Platini out of the race to replace Blatter in the election in February. But he still submitted his candidate papers on Thursday. —AFP
