Former UEFA president Michel Platini has been arrested in France over Qatar’s emergence as the 2022 World Cup hosts.
The former France captain was detained by French police on Tuesday morning in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris, as part of the investigation into corruption surrounding how the 2022 World Cup hosting rights were awarded, according to French investigative outlet Mediapart.
The 63-year-old was UEFA president from January 2007 – when he replaced the late Lennart Johansson – until he stepped down in 2016 after being banned from football for six year, which was later reduced to four after appealing the sanction to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
That ban expired in March this year, but investigators leading the fight against corruption within football have arrested him as part of the case looking into how Qatar won the right to host the next World Cup.
Platini was on the 1998 Fifa World Cup organising committee and joined the FIFA executive committee in 2002 until he received his ban.
The report also claims that Claude Gueant, who formerly advised ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy as Secretary General, has also been taken in for questioning but has not been arrested.
