PARIS: Suspended European football chief Michel Platini will not attend Friday’s FIFA ethics committee hearing in protest at what he condemns as a political process designed to prevent him running to lead the world governing body, his lawyers said on Wednesday.

Platini was provisionally suspended for 90 days on Oct 8, alongside outgoing FIFA president Sepp Blatter, over a suspicious payment from FIFA to Platini, deepening a corruption scandal that has engulfed football’s ruling body.

The ethics panel is set to rule on their cases, and could impose much longer bans than the provisional suspensions if it finds the men guilty of violations.

Blatter is due to appear on Thursday. It will be Blatter’s return inside FIFA’s home after an enforced absence of more than two months. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

Platini’s lawyers objected to comments in French newspaper L’Equipe by ethics committee spokesman Andreas Bantel that the former France captain would be sidelined for “several years”.

“Suppose even the charge of corruption is not accepted by the chamber, there are many other offences such as a conflict of interest, mismanagement or falsification of accounts,” Bantel was also quoted as saying by L’Equipe before its website story was altered.

Bantel, who has highlighted that he represents only the prosecutors in FIFA’s in-house court, not the judges, said that the French newspaper had published “an unauthorised interview” and his comments had been made in a personal capacity.

“Michel Platini ... has decided not to attend his hearing at the FIFA ethics committee on Dec. 18, 2015, as the verdict of this ethics committee has been announced in the press last weekend by one of its spokespersons, Mr Andreas Bantel, in disregard of all fundamental rights, starting with the presumption of innocence,” the lawyers said in a statement.

By his decision to boycott the hearing Platini “intends to show his deepest indignation towards a process which he considers as uniquely political and designed to prevent him from putting himself forward for the FIFA presidency,” the lawyers said in their statement.

The decision was announced less than 90 minutes after FIFA ethics committee judges promised Platini a fair trial even if he carried out a threat to boycott the hearing.

FIFA said they noted Platini’s decision but his lawyers were still welcome to attend the hearing, which would be handled in “an unbiased manner”.

“Mr Platini would miss the opportunity to present his points of view vis-a-vis the adjudicatory chamber in person,” FIFA’s ethics committee said in a statement.

“However, his legal representatives would be fully able to present his case at the hearing.”

It added: “We would like to clearly stress that the adjudicatory chamber of the ethics committee will deal with the present case in the same way as with any other procedure independently and in an unbiased manner.”

Platini, who has been head of European football’s governing body UEFA since 2002, had registered as a candidate to replace Blatter in a vote on Feb 26.

He had been seen as a frontrunner for the job before he was suspended as part of an investigation into the payment of 2 million Swiss francs ($2 million) he received from FIFA in 2011 for work he completed between 1998 and 2002.

Last Friday, he failed in an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to have the suspension lifted, meaning he was unable to attend Saturday’s draw for the Euro 2016 Championship in France.

FIFA is suffering the worst corruption scandal in its more than 100 years of existence, drawing in top officials and triggering investigations by US and Swiss authorities.

Blatter said in a letter on Tuesday that the ethics committee’s investigation was “tendentious and dangerous”, adding: “This trial reminds me of the Inquisition.”

Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2015