Lausanne, December 4

The FIFA ethics committee will question Michel Platini “most likely between December 16 and 18”, a source close to football’s world governing body said Friday.

Platini’s lawyer said at the end of November that the ethics body’s investigatory chamber wants the UEFA chief banned for life over

a suspect $2.0million payment he received from FIFA’s now suspended leader Sepp Blatter in 2011. Platini and Blatter “have asked to be heard, and this will be granted,” a source close to FIFA told AFP.

The 60-year-old Frenchman, until recently the favourite to take over football’s world governing body, is set to appear before the FIFA ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber. No further information has been released from Blatter’s legal team concerning his own hearings.

Like Platini, Blatter was handed a provisional 90-day suspension on October 8 while an investigation is held into the suspect payment. That has ruled the Platini out of the race for the FIFA presidency to be decided in the election on February 26.

The investigation, alongside a US bribery inquiry and a Swiss probe into the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, has plunged FIFA into its worst-ever crisis.