Michel Platini Refuses to Return £16,000 Watch Given to Him by CBF
It's Michel Platini's watch and he's going home.
It was recently revealed that a number of high-ranking officials were given £16,000 watches by the Brazilian Football Confederation during the World Cup, a violation of the organisation's code of ethics.
Platini, the president of UEFA, is having none of it in spite of FIFA's urgings to return the watch. Why? Because he's an educated man. That absolves everything.
Per the BBC:
"I'm a well-educated person. I don't return gifts.
If the (FIFA) ethics committee was not pleased, they should've told us that four months ago in Brazil when we received the watches.
They were aware that we were receiving these watches because everybody received them.
Because there's an article in the British press, all of a sudden FIFA says that they need to return the watches. There's something that's very surprising to me in the way that this process has played out and I do not like that.
"
For his part, at least Platini—who claims he was unaware of the watch's extravagant value—will make a donation for the value of the gift.
"I'm going to ask for the value of this watch and I'm going to give to a charitable organisation, a foundation, this value," he told the Associated Press.
Not long after the story broke, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, ever a bastion of integrity, chimed in on Twitter, further highlighting the bang-your-head-against-the-wall weirdness of it all.
"Everyone in the global football community has a responsibility to act ethically. Football fans rightly demand this. FIFA has taken the lead.
— Joseph S Blatter (@SeppBlatter) September 19, 2014"
[BBC, Dirty Tackle]
