A report issued to UEFA’s executive committee in 1998 appears to support Michel Platini’s claim that he was paid an annual salary “of one million Swiss francs” for work as an advisor to FIFA, according to a claim by French newspaper Journal du Dimanche . The weekly reported on Sunday that it possesses a copy of a document which it describes as “resembling an intelligence service memo”.
It reports that the document was distributed during a UEFA executive committee meeting in the Swedish capital Stockholm on November 12, 1998.
The document indicates that Sepp Blatter — who was elected FIFA president for the first time in June 1998 — “already announced that Platini would become the future sporting director of FIFA. Platini would therefore become part of FIFA.”
It added that there were rumours that the Frenchman “wishes to work from Paris” and that “there has been talk about one million Swiss francs as salary”.
That meeting was attended by the then UEFA president, the Swede Lennart Johansson, as well as the Germans Egidius Braun and Gerhard Aigner, the Italian Antonio Matarrese, the Turk Senes Erzik and the Norwegian Per Ravn Omdal.
Three of them — Johansson, Matarrese and Erzik — are also members of FIFA, according to the newspaper. Johansson lost out to Blatter in the 1998 election for the FIFA presidency, with Platini giving his backing to the latter.
The current UEFA president Platini, along with Blatter, was handed a provisional 90-day ban from all football activities on October 8 while an investigation was held into a suspect payment of USD 2 million paid by the latter to the Frenchman in 2011 allegedly for work carried out in 2002.
A source close to FIFA revealed on Friday that the FIFA ethics committee will question Platini on the affair “most likely between December 16 and 18”.
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