The FIFA president’s future was being determined by the governing body’s ethics committee at meetings in Zurich, with Blatter at risk of being suspended after a criminal case was opened against him.
Blatter associate Klaus Stoehlker, who has no role at FIFA, told The Associated Press and other media outlets the ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber recommended a 90-day suspension for the sport’s most powerful official.
“Blatter has heard that from several sources,” Stoehlker said. “He has not got any message from the committee ... and he is perfectly under control. He is going to the office tomorrow.”
Long-time Blatter aide Walter Gagg told the AP that Blatter has not yet received any information or a decision from the ethics committee.
“I was with Mr. Blatter 10 minutes ago and we know nothing about (a decision),” Gagg said just after 6-30 p.m. in Zurich. “He left now. He had no news.”
Abdoulaye Makhtar Diop, a Senegalese member of the executive committee’s adjudicatory chamber, said earlier in a statement that cases involving Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini were being discussed in Zurich this week.
Ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert will take the final decision on the fates of Blatter and Platini, who were questioned as part of a Swiss criminal investigation last month. Blatter is a suspect but Platini was questioned as something between a witness and an accused person over a payment he received from FIFA in 2011.
Platini had been considered the favourite to succeed Blatter in the February 26 emergency election prompted by the president’s decision in June to quit. That came four days after Blatter was elected to a fifth, four-year term despite FIFA being plunged into crisis after 14 people were indicted in an American investigation into soccer bribery.
Platini’s election prospects could be thwarted by receiving the maximum 90-day suspension from FIFA, with an October 26 deadline for candidacies to be submitted and approved.
If Blatter was forced from power before the election, senior vice president Issa Hayatou would become interim FIFA leader. But the long-time Confederation of African Football president from Cameroon has his own chequered past.
Ethics committee spokesman Marc Tenbuecken declined to comment on the cases, despite Diop’s statement.
“We are strictly limited in our possibilities to communicate ongoing procedures,” Tenbuecken said.
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