ZURICH: FIFA ethics investigators said on Tuesday they planned an appeal that could extend eight-year bans on world football body president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter and European soccer boss Michel Platini, raising the possibility of lifelong exclusion.

Blatter and Platini were both banned from football last month for ethics violations, leaving the global game leaderless as it seeks to dig itself out from beneath a slew of corruption cases. Both have denied wrongdoing.

The two escaped potential lifetime bans demanded by the committee’s investigatory arm when the panel’s adjudicatory chamber found no evidence of bribery linked to a 2 million Swiss franc ($2 million) payment FIFA made to Platini in 2011, with Blatter’s approval.

Instead, Blatter and Platini were banned for a range of lesser violations of the FIFA ethics code, including accepting or receiving gifts and conflicts of interest.

“The investigatory chamber intends to appeal against the decision for Mr Blatter and Mr Platini at the FIFA appeal committee,” investigatory panel spokesman Andreas Bantel told reporters in Zurich, where FIFA has its headquarters.

While Blatter and Platini have said the panel was seeking a lifetime ban from the sport, Bantel said he declined to comment on the content of its appeal.

Blatter has said he feels “abandoned” by the global football body and will now focus on clearing his name through his own appeal.

Platini, who was the strong favourite to succeed Blatter until becoming mired in allegations that led to his ban, has also said he will appeal.

Platini lodged his appeal at FIFA on Monday, his entourage said.

They deny wrongdoing over Blatter approving a $2 million payment from FIFA to Platini in 2011 as backdated salary without a contract.

Platini worked as a presidential adviser to Blatter from 1999-2002 but did not claim the money owed to him for more than eight years, when FIFA was no longer obliged by Swiss law to pay him.

The case has ended 60-year-old Platini’s bid to succeed his former mentor as FIFA president in an election on Feb 26. The Frenchman announced last week that he was withdrawing from the FIFA race to concentrate on clearing his name.

Blatter, 79, wants to host the election meeting in Zurich as a farewell to FIFA after more than 40 years.

The crisis gripping the football world began with arrests of a group of FIFA officials at a luxury Zurich hotel in May.

Since then Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice has frozen around $80 million in assets in 13 bank accounts and the United States has charged 41 people and entities in a probe of corruption that spans football bodies around the globe.

There is precedent for extending bans on appeal.

Vernon Manilal Fernando, a former FIFA executive committee member from Sri Lanka, was banned for eight years by the ethics committee in April 2013.

The investigatory chamber appealed against this, saying the ban was too short, while Fernando fought the ban that he said was too long.

In October 2013 FIFA’s Appeal Committee increased the ban to life. This decision was upheld by the Court for Arbitration in Sport in March 2015.

Fernando was judged to have bribed Asian officials to vote for Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar in a 2009 election for a FIFA executive committee seat.

The loser in that bitterly fought contest, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa of Bahrain, is now a candidate for the FIFA presidency.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2016