Switzerland’s attorney general has said he would be prepared to order a swoop on Michel Platini’s UEFA offices, if necessary. However, prosecutor Michael Lauber was not prepared to say what course was likely.
Attorney General Michael Lauber said on Tueday that authorities were treating Platini as being somewhere « between a witness and an accused person. »
Lauber told reporters he did not rule out the possibility of searching the Swiss headquarters of UEFA, the European football government body of which Platini is president.
« I will do anything, if I can do something, to clear up what’s the real truth and if I have enough elements to go there I could not exclude that I also have to go there, » said Lauber.
On Friday, Swiss prosecutors said they had opened a criminal investigation into Blatter, head of the world governing body FIFA. Investigators said Blatter was suspected of making a « disloyal payment » of 2 million Swiss Francs (1.83 million euros, $2.05 million) to Platini in 2011, at the expense of FIFA. The money was allegedly for work performed between January 1999 and June 2002.
Possible favorite derailed?
Until Friday, Platini had been considered one of the favorites to take over from Blatter after a presidential election slated for February 26. Lauber said he would not say if he was willing to eliminate Platini from enquries at present, saying that to do so « would do real damage to the investigation.
« We didn’t audition Mr Platini as a witness, that’s not true. We investigated against him in between as a witness and an accused person, » Lauber said after a speaking engagement on Tuesday.
Speaking to the AFP news agency, Platini said on Tuesday that he was still « determined » to run for president.
‘A person providing information’
UEFA said on Friday that Platini had been interviewed as a witness . On Monday the Frenchman said in a letter to UEFA’s 54 member associations that he had been interviewed « not as a person accused of any wrongdoing but simply in my capacity as a person providing information. »
The FIFA bribery scandal erupted in May when United States investigators indicted 14 officials, including seven who were arrested at a Zurich hotel two days before Blatter’s presidential election. Only one of the seven – ousted FIFA vice president Jeffrey Webb – has been extradited to the U.S.
FIFA’s ethics committee on Tuesday banned former vice-president Jack Warner from football-related activities for life . Warner left FIFA in 2011 after being implicated in a bribery scandal, and was investigated by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee after its report on the inquiry into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process.