Former FIFA secretary Jerome Valcke appeals 10-year ban

Jerome Valcke is challenging his 10-year ban from any football-related activity with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), a media release confirmed on Tuesday.

Valcke is appealing for CAS to have “the challenged decision set aside in order for the sanction imposed on him to be lifted definitively.”

The former FIFA general secretary, a right-hand man of the disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter for eight years, was hit with a 12-year suspension on June 24, 2016, but had it reduced by two years 11 days later. The punishment relates to the sale of World Cup tickets for personal profit, travelling privately at FIFA’s expense, attempting to take a cut from television rights deals, and destruction of evidence condemning his corrupt behaviour.

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Valcke, 56, has protested his innocence since being under investigation following the infamous Baur au Lac hotel raid in Zurich, Switzerland in May 2015.

Blatter’s attempt to overturn his six-year ban was rejected by CAS in December.