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FIFA’s ex-chief Sepp Blatter plans to sue current President Gianni Infantino

Blatter intends to appeal in court an earlier publication from the organization that following the 2014 FIFA World Cup he was allegedly paid a bonus of $12 million

© Mikhail Dziaparidze/TASS

MOSCOW, May 29. /TASS/. Sepp Blatter, the former president of the world’s governing football body FIFA, intends to file a lawsuit by the end of the month against FIFA and its current President Gianni Infantino, AFP news agency reported on Wednesday.

Blatter, who led FIFA between 1998 and 2015, intends to appeal in court an earlier publication from the organization that following the 2014 FIFA World Cup he was allegedly paid a bonus of 12 million Swiss francs ($12 million or 10.6 million euros).

"I want to sue him," Blatter, 83, was quoted by the AFP as saying, adding that he planned to meet with his lawyers on Wednesday in order to file an appeal with a court in Zurich by the end of this month against FIFA and Infantino.

Blatter seeks to receive via the court a compensation for non-pecuniary damage following a publication of information from FIFA, which he says was not true.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino is a sole registered candidate for the presidential election of the world’s governing football body this summer. The election is scheduled to be held at the 69th FIFA Congress in Paris on June 5, 2019.

Infantino voiced his plans to run for re-election last June at the 68th FIFA Congress in the Russian capital of Moscow. Born in Switzerland, current FIFA President Infantino is fluent in French, Italian and German and also speaks English, Spanish and Arabic.

FIFA convened for its extraordinary Congress in February 2016 to elect the organization’s new president following a chain of high-profile corruption scandals, which engulfed the organization in 2015.

Then-president of FIFA Sepp Blatter announced his plans in late 2015 to resign as soon as the voting would take place to elect a new candidate at the helm of FIFA.

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