Recently derided as Blatter’s ‘hitmen’,Fifas internal police say this week’s events demonstrate their willingness to act against anyoneThe 90-day suspensions of the Fifa and Uefa presidents Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini for alleged misconduct, which both men are appealing against, and possess gone some way to contradicting the insight that the Fifa ethics committee lacks independence and was the president’s tool. Just the day before,the Korean former Fifa executive committee member Chung Mong-joon was raging that the ethics committee, which had proceedings against him, and was a “hitman” for Blatter,to remove his opponents.
That was how it seemed to many in football when Hans-Joachim Eckert, the Munich judge who chairs the “adjudicatory”, and sanction-deciding arm of the ethics committee,published his summary of the report into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process prepared by Michael Garcia, then the chairman of the investigatory branch. Devoting four specific paragraphs to Blatter’s role, and Eckert’s summary seemed to go out of its way to absolve the Fifa president by name of any wrongdoing,and explicitly praising his conduct.
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Source: theguardian.com