KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —-Jerome Valcke must wait up to another six weeks before FIFA’s suspended secretary-general learns his fate from the ethics committee.

Last September Valcke, then president Sepp Blatter’s trusted No2, was relieved of his duties as secretary-general ‘effective immediately’ after allegations linking him to a World Cup ticket deal.

Later the 55-year-old was also suspended by the ethics committee though his downfall has been overshadowed by the punitive actions against Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini.

Jerome Valcke . . . FIFA secretary-general since 2007

Valcke’s suspension has been extended for a further, statutory 45 days to allow consideration of the investigators’ recommendation for a nine-year suspension from all football plus a fine of SFr 100,000 (£67,400) for alleged “misuse of expenses and other infringements of FIFA’s rules and regulations.”

Frenchman Valcke learned of his initial FIFA suspension four months ago after the mid-air turnaround of his charter flight to Russia where he had been heading for events marking 1,000 days to the country’s staging of the 2018 World Cup finals. His FIFA duties were taken over on an interim basis by finance director Markus Kattner.

Hence Blatter acted only after conferring with the members of the emergency committee, the heads of the six regional confederations including UEFA’s Michel Platini.

Valcke had appeared the one solid figure left at the head of FIFA as the corruption scandal swirling around Blatter and Co, keeping the operation ticking over.

However one issue had also brought him to the scandal’s centre stage.

This was the controversial $10m payment made by the 2010 South African World Cup organisers to the former CONCACAF president Jack Warner. Valcke insisted that he had effected the payment out of funds due to the South Africans and was only obeying orders from the late Julio Grondona, then FIFA’s finance chairman.

Valcke had been expected to leave FIFA after the election of a new president next February 26.

He made his impending departure plain during a news conference on the eve of the World Cup qualifying draw in St Petersburg in July. Speculation has followed this week that he was already negotiating the terms of his departure but had failed to reach agreement.

Tickets contract

The tickets allegations stemmed from a claim by a Zurich company, JB Sports Marketing, that it had been misled by Valcke over a contract with FIFA to sell VIP ticket packages for the 2013 Confederations Cup and 2014 World Cup.

Benny Alon, a former Israeli footballer now resident in Arizona, said JB had understood that the surplus of up to four times the face value of the tickets themselves would be split 50/50 with FIFA, with Valcke undertaking a personal role as go-between.

Later FIFA assigned the contract to the Byrom-owned Match companies whose subsidiaries held exclusive rights for hospitality on the one hand and ‘FIFA family’ ticketing on the other. JB complained later that the tickets delivered were not of the grade for which it had paid.

Alon is a skiing friend of Michel Platini, the president of European federation UEFA who had been favourite to succeed Blatter as head of FIFA until also falling foul of the ethics committee.

On October 8 Valcke was suspended for 90 days by FIFA’s ethics committee pending a full investigation into the allegations.

Valcke’s suspension was also laced with reports that he and Blatter had fallen out over the Frenchman’s demands for a multi-million severance deal in which he was reportedly seeking full indemnity against any and all possible legal action.

Lawyer’s denial

His lawyer, Barry Berke from the New York firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, has issued a vehement denial of any wrongdoing, saying: “The investigatory chamber has chosen to ignore Jerome Valcke’s exemplary conduct and extraordinary contributions during his long tenure as secretary-general.

“Today’s [announcement] is nothing more than a self-serving public relations effort to wrongly attack Mr Valcke in a desperate attempt to to try to prove that FIFA can police itself.

“Mr Valcke did absolutely nothing wrong as any independent and fair rewiew of the facts would establish.”

Valcke had joined FIFA originally as head of the marketing section but was sent on ‘gardening leave’ after taking the blame for the costly court case which followed the clumsy replacement by Visa of MasterCard as a World Cup sponsor in 2006.

Valcke returned to FIFA in the summer of 2007 as secretary-general and took the lead role, most notably, in ensuring that South Africa and then Brazil came up to the mark in preparations to stage the World Cups of 2010 and 2014 respectively.

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