The Sunday News
FIFA’s ethics committee insist they could not recommend life bans for Fifa and Uefa chiefs Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini if they did not treat other investigations just as seriously.
This stance apparently justifies the ludicrous amount of time and effort they put into retrieving 48 Parmigiani watches — each worth £16 400 — given as presents by the Brazilian football confederation to Fifa delegates on the eve of the 2014 World Cup.
The watches will now be donated to the charity streetfootballworld, with the proceeds going to initiatives across Brazil that use football to drive social change.
Fifa demanded all watches be returned even when recipients such as the FA’s Greg Dyke, who paid over £3 000 in import duty, made it clear they were selling the gifts to aid charities of their own choice. In Dyke’s case, Breast Cancer Care was in line to benefit.
A Fifa ethics spokesman admitted: ‘It was a symbolic issue. We can’t recommend serious disciplinary measures for Blatter and Platini if the same effort for justice isn’t apparent in other cases we are investigating.
“It was a very hard piece of work to retrieve the watches, but we were insistent. There was no way out until all the watches were back in Zurich. Even one of the football officials arrested at the Baur au Lac last May was bringing back a watch.
“We were insistent because no one had the right to redistribute expensive watches that should not have been in their possession.”
