Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini and Jerome Valcke have officially been handed 90-day bans by the Fifa Ethics Committee.
Along with the powerful trio, Chung Mong-joon, a South Korean official who has served as vice president of Fifa, has been banned for six years and fined £67,924.
Blatter has come under serious scrutiny in recent months amid investigations into the governing body’s conduct from the US Department of Justice, while the Swiss attorney general has opened criminal proceedings against him for alleged intentional mismanagement and misappropriation of Fifa’s funds, with the pressure reaching such a point that he resigned as president in June.
Platini, meanwhile, has been widely heralded as a potential future successor to Blatter, but he too has been suspended after becoming implicated in the corruption allegations.
“The adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee chaired by Hans Joachim Eckert has provisionally banned Fifa President Joseph S. Blatter, Uefa President and Fifa Vice-President Michel Platini, and Fifa Secretary General Jerome Valcke (who has already been put on leave by his employer Fifa) for a duration of 90 days,” a Fifa statement reads.
“The duration of the bans may be extended for an additional period not exceeding 45 days. The former Fifa Vice-President Chung Mong-joon has been banned for six years and fined CHF 100,000. During this time, the above individuals are banned from all football activities on a national and international level. The bans come into force immediately.
“The grounds for these decisions are the investigations that are being carried out by the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee. The chairman of the chamber is Dr Cornel Borbély.
The investigation into Joseph S. Blatter is being carried out by Robert Torres, the investigation into Michel Platini by Vanessa Allard.
“The proceedings against the South Korean football official Chung Mong-joon were opened in January 2015 based on findings in the report on the investigation into the bidding process for the 2018/2022 Fifa World Cups.
“He has been found guilty of infringing article 13 (General rules of conduct), article 16 (Confidentiality), article 18 (Duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting), article 41 (Obligation of the parties to collaborate) and article 42 (General obligation to collaborate) of the Fifa Code of Ethics.
“The Ethics Committee is unable to comment on the details of the decisions until they become final, due to the provisions of article 36 (Confidentiality) of the Fifa Code of Ethics.”
The statement further said that “As mandated by article 32 (6) of the Fifa Statutes, Issa Hayatou, as the longest-serving vice-president on Fifa’s Executive Committee, will serve as Acting President of Fifa.”
Hayatou was elected president of the Confederation of African Football in 1988, and previously ran for the Fifa presidency in 2002 – which ended in a crushing defeat to Blatter.
The Cameroonian was accused in 2011 of accepting bribes in relation to the 2022 World Cup hosting rights, but was cleared following a Fifa investigation.
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