ZURICH // Sepp Blatter attempted to save his presidency on Thursday at the Fifa ethics committee he helped create and whose authority he does not recognise in his case.
The suspended Fifa president had been expected to tell four judges he is innocent of wrongdoing during the hearing at the headquarters of football’s governing body, the first time Blatter has entered the building since he was banned for 90 days in October.
“Blatter looks forward to a decision in his favoUr, because the evidence requires it,” Blatter’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, said in a statement after the hearing. “The evidence demonstrates that president Blatter behaved properly and certainly did not violate Fifa’s Code of Ethics. This investigation should be closed and the suspension lifted.”
With a large bandage on his face, Blatter arrived at Fifa headquarters shortly after 8am local time (11am UAE) in a chauffeur-driven car for a hearing that was scheduled to start at 9am. A spokesman for Blatter, Thomas Renggli, said the Swiss official has had a minor procedure to treat a skin problem on his right cheek.
At 5pm, Blatter and lead lawyer Lorenz Erni drove away from the building without making any comment.
In 2012, Blatter was key to empowering a tougher and more independent Fifa ethics committee that he now insists cannot remove an elected president.
“Now it has come back to haunt him,” Mark Pieth, a former anti-corruption adviser to Fifa, told the Associated Press this week.
Blatter risks a life ban if the verdict, due early next week, is guilty for approving a payment of about US$2 million (Dh7.3m) from Fifa to Michel Platini in 2011. Platini has also been banned for 90 days.
Otherwise, Blatter could be banned for several years for a conflict of interest between the two longtime Fifa executive committee colleagues. He is also likely to be quizzed about falsifying Fifa accounts.
In a Swiss television interview last month, Blatter said it is “humiliating” for a Fifa president to be barred from office by his own ethics committee. He also said the ethics committee he ushered in after a previous corruption crisis had no right to take him down.
Only the Fifa congress can remove a president, Blatter said at the time.
In July 2012, Fifa moved from an in-house committee monitoring unethical conduct to a two-chamber group of prosecutors and judges with freedom and funding to pursue cases.
Pieth led a group of anti-corruption experts and football officials who steered Blatter and Fifa toward modernising reforms from 2012-14. Not all were accepted, but the two-chamber ethics court was crucial.
“It must be said that he was the one who pushed it through congress,” Pieth, a Swiss professor of law, said in a telephone interview. “That was the moment we all believed he is serious, at least about the letter of the changes.”
Blatter complained about the ethics committee’s power to Russian news agency TASS after his 90-day ban was imposed.
“They can be independent but they don’t need to be against me,” he was quoted as saying in October.
Blatter was charged by the ethics committee after Switzerland's attorney general opened criminal proceedings against him for the payment to Platini, who is boycotting his own ethics hearing on Friday.
The case centres on Platini getting about $2 million of Fifa money as uncontracted salary for working as Blatter’s presidential adviser in 1999-2002.
Platini asked for a salary of 1 million Swiss francs. Blatter has said the former France international had a contract for 300,000 Swiss francs, plus a “gentlemen’s agreement” to get the rest later.
Swiss law obliged Fifa only to pay the deferred money within five years but Platini, by then Uefa president, reportedly asked for the balance in 2010 and was paid in February 2011.
The timing has raised suspicion, coming months before a presidential election when Uefa urged its members to support Blatter against Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar. Blatter won unopposed after Bin Hammam was implicated in bribing Caribbean voters.
On Thursday, Blatter also faces questions about false accounting because Fifa’s debt to Platini was not recorded in financial reports from 2002-2011.
"The first part of the payment is in the accounts, the second no, but I am not a Fifa accountant," Blatter said in an interview with Italian sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport this week. "And what was or wasn't in the accounts, was a debt to pay."
If he is found guilty, Blatter can appeal to Fifa and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
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Timeline
2012-2015
The company offers payments/bribes to win key contracts in the Middle East
May 2017
The UK SFO officially opens investigation into Petrofac’s use of agents, corruption, and potential bribery to secure contracts
September 2021
Petrofac pleads guilty to seven counts of failing to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act
October 2021
Court fines Petrofac £77 million for bribery. Former executive receives a two-year suspended sentence
December 2024
Petrofac enters into comprehensive restructuring to strengthen the financial position of the group
May 2025
The High Court of England and Wales approves the company’s restructuring plan
July 2025
The Court of Appeal issues a judgment challenging parts of the restructuring plan
August 2025
Petrofac issues a business update to execute the restructuring and confirms it will appeal the Court of Appeal decision
October 2025
Petrofac loses a major TenneT offshore wind contract worth €13 billion. Holding company files for administration in the UK. Petrofac delisted from the London Stock Exchange
November 2025
180 Petrofac employees laid off in the UAE
Ten tax points to be aware of in 2026
1. Domestic VAT refund amendments: request your refund within five years
If a business does not apply for the refund on time, they lose their credit.
2. E-invoicing in the UAE
Businesses should continue preparing for the implementation of e-invoicing in the UAE, with 2026 a preparation and transition period ahead of phased mandatory adoption.
3. More tax audits
Tax authorities are increasingly using data already available across multiple filings to identify audit risks.
4. More beneficial VAT and excise tax penalty regime
Tax disputes are expected to become more frequent and more structured, with clearer administrative objection and appeal processes. The UAE has adopted a new penalty regime for VAT and excise disputes, which now mirrors the penalty regime for corporate tax.
5. Greater emphasis on statutory audit
There is a greater need for the accuracy of financial statements. The International Financial Reporting Standards standards need to be strictly adhered to and, as a result, the quality of the audits will need to increase.
6. Further transfer pricing enforcement
Transfer pricing enforcement, which refers to the practice of establishing prices for internal transactions between related entities, is expected to broaden in scope. The UAE will shortly open the possibility to negotiate advance pricing agreements, or essentially rulings for transfer pricing purposes.
7. Limited time periods for audits
Recent amendments also introduce a default five-year limitation period for tax audits and assessments, subject to specific statutory exceptions. While the standard audit and assessment period is five years, this may be extended to up to 15 years in cases involving fraud or tax evasion.
8. Pillar 2 implementation
Many multinational groups will begin to feel the practical effect of the Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT), the UAE's implementation of the OECD’s global minimum tax under Pillar 2. While the rules apply for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2025, it is 2026 that marks the transition to an operational phase.
9. Reduced compliance obligations for imported goods and services
Businesses that apply the reverse-charge mechanism for VAT purposes in the UAE may benefit from reduced compliance obligations.
10. Substance and CbC reporting focus
Tax authorities are expected to continue strengthening the enforcement of economic substance and Country-by-Country (CbC) reporting frameworks. In the UAE, these regimes are increasingly being used as risk-assessment tools, providing tax authorities with a comprehensive view of multinational groups’ global footprints and enabling them to assess whether profits are aligned with real economic activity.
Contributed by Thomas Vanhee and Hend Rashwan, Aurifer
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
What are the main cyber security threats?
Cyber crime - This includes fraud, impersonation, scams and deepfake technology, tactics that are increasingly targeting infrastructure and exploiting human vulnerabilities.
Cyber terrorism - Social media platforms are used to spread radical ideologies, misinformation and disinformation, often with the aim of disrupting critical infrastructure such as power grids.
Cyber warfare - Shaped by geopolitical tension, hostile actors seek to infiltrate and compromise national infrastructure, using one country’s systems as a springboard to launch attacks on others.
