A source close to Platini, currently serving a four-year ban, said last week he would attend the meeting of European football’s governing body, when the UEFA executive committee will vote on his successor.

“The FIFA Ethics Committee has informed UEFA that Michel Platini will be allowed to address the 12th Extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens on 14 September,” UEFA said in a statement.

“A request for Mr. Platini’s attendance had been recently made by UEFA and we welcome this decision.”

The decision did not sit well with Reinhard Grindel, president of the German football federation.

“The UEFA Congress should showcase the programme of its new president and not the mistakes of his predecessor,” Grindel told German news agency DPA. “I would have preferred Michel Platini not to have put in an appearance. This Congress must focus on the future, not the past.”

The former French international, a three-time European footballer of the year, is a key figure in the scandal that brought down FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Platini was on the receiving end of a suspect two-million-Swiss-franc ($2 million, 1.8 million euros) payment that Blatter authorised in 2011. FIFA has said the payment amounted to an ethics violation and has suspended both men for six years.

Blatter and Platini insist it was a legitimate payment for an unpaid balance that FIFA owed the then-UEFA boss for consulting work done a decade earlier.

Platini lost his CAS appeal against his FIFA ban earlier this year, but the court cut his suspension to four years

Football’s ruling body claimed in June that Blatter, Jerome Valcke and Markus Kattner had skimmed off the eight-figure sum in salaries and bonuses in “a coordinated effort” to “enrich themselves” between 2011-2015.

It says it has passed on its finding to the Swiss police. In a statement, the investigatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee announced it had opened “formal proceedings” against the three men who it suspects of “conflict of interest and corruption”.

Blatter is serving a six-year ban from football over ethics violations relating to a suspect $2 million he authorised in 2011 to former UEFA boss Michel Platini. Valcke was himself banned for 12 years, reduced to 10 on appeal, over misconduct regarding television deals and 2014 World Cup ticket sales.

Kattner, who briefly succeeded Valacke as Blatter’s righthand man, was fired in May over ‘breaches’ involving millions of dollars. AFP

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where Platini filed an appeal against his ban in February, reduced his suspension from six years to four, saying the penalty initially imposed by FIFA’s ethics committee was “too severe.”

But the court said it was “not convinced” that the $2.0 million (1.8 million euros) payment Platini received from FIFA in 2011 was legitimate.

The payment was ordered by FIFA’s disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter, who was also brought down over the infamous transaction.

The pair are the highest-profile casualties in an unprecedented set of corruption scandals within world football, which has seen dozens of long-serving FIFA executives arrested and charged with corruption.

Platini, once the front-runner to succeed Blatter at FIFA and become the most powerful man in the sport, said in a statement that following the ruling he had no choice but to resign from UEFA.

“As agreed with the national associations, I resign as president of UEFA to pursue my fight before the Swiss courts to prove my probity in this case.

He called the CAS ruling “a profound injustice.”

UEFA’s executive committee is to meet in Basel on May 18, before the Europa League final, when it will likely begin the process of selecting Platini’s replacement, although an election could be put off for several more weeks.

The ruling means Platini will be barred from presiding over the Euro 2016 which opens in his native France on June 10. Platini was a key organiser up until his suspension in December.

Platini and Blatter have both denied any wrongdoing. They have insisted the $2.0 million was part of a legitimate oral contract in exchange for consulting work performed by Platini.

The CAS ruling noted that Platini had a valid consulting contract with FIFA signed in 1999 — with an agreed salary of 300,000 Swiss francs ($300,000) per year — which terminated in 2002.

But, the $2.0 million he received from FIFA in 2011, “was not based on any document established at the time of the contractual relations” and did not match the amount left unpaid at the end of the contract, CAS said. AFP