FIFA ethics judge opens cases against Blatter, Platini
Aims for verdicts in December
Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini should have their day in FIFA ethics court in December.
FIFA ethics judge Joachim Eckert formally opened cases on Monday against the FIFA and UEFA presidents for alleged financial wrongdoing.
"The adjudicatory chamber intends to come to a decision in both cases during the month of December," a spokesman for the German judge said in a statement.
Blatter and Platini "will be invited to submit positions including any evidence with regard to the final reports of the investigatory chamber," the statement said.
Both can request hearings, which are expected to be scheduled in December.
Blatter and Platini, who are currently serving 90-day suspensions pending Eckert's rulings, face bans of at least several years. Any sanctions passed can be appealed to FIFA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The FIFA ethics investigations unit said Saturday it submitted case dossiers and asked for sanctions against both officials. Details were not given.
In recently judged FIFA ethics cases, former FIFA officials Chung Mong-joon and Harold Mayne-Nicholls were banned for six and seven years, respectively, despite their offences not including financial corruption.
The latest case centres on $2 million US of FIFA money Blatter approved for Platini in 2011 as backdated salary.
Both deny wrongdoing and say they had a verbal contract to pay Platini for work as Blatter's presidential adviser from 1998-2002.
Platini cannot campaign for the FIFA presidential election on Feb. 26 while suspended, and will almost certainly have his candidacy ended if found guilty of wrongdoing by Eckert.
Blatter says he was near death in hospital
Without specifying his illness, Blatter said in excerpts from a television interview that he was near death when hospitalized for stress-related problems this month.
The suspended FIFA president was "between the angels singing and the devil's fire," he told Swiss broadcaster RTS in his first television interview since leaving the hospital on Nov. 12.
"But it was the angels which sang," Blatter said, adding "happily I never lost consciousness" during the 48 hours when most ill.
Parts of the interview were released ahead Wednesday's full broadcast.
The French-language broadcaster said in a news report late Sunday that the 79-year-old Blatter was treated in intensive care for several days.