Blatter, Platini lose FIFA appeal, get ban reduction

FIFA’s appeal committee has partially confirmed the decisions taken by the organisation’s ethics committee against Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini but reduced their bans from football from eight to six years.

Blatter and Platini’s appeals against infringements of general rules of conduct, loyalty, conflicts of interests and offering and accepting gifts and other benefits were rejected.

The appeal committee decided, however, that “strong mitigating factors” – such as the pair’s service to FIFA and UEFA – were not taken into account when the original sanction was established.

Read also: FIFA election: Blatter not ready to back any candidate

Blatter and Platini will therefore have one year taken off their five-year bans for offering and accepting gifts and other benefits and another year taken off the three-year bans for the other breaches.

Appeals from the investigatory chamber for life bans from all football-related activity to be imposed were turned away as breaches of the FIFA regulations on bribery and corruption could not be established.

Both Blatter and Platini will therefore be banned from all football-related activities for a period of six years backdated to October 15, 2015, when the original sanctions were imposed.

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