ZURICH (AP) — Sepp Blatter is trying to save his FIFA presidency on Thursday at the ethics committee he helped create and whose authority he does not recognize.
The suspended FIFA leader will tell four judges he is innocent of wrongdoing when he enters the headquarters of soccer's world governing body for the first time since October.
Blatter was key in 2012 to empowering a tougher and more independent FIFA ethics committee that he now insists cannot remove an elected president.
"Now it has come back to haunt him," Mark Pieth, a former anti-corruption adviser to FIFA, told The Associated Press this week.
Blatter risks a life ban if the judges' verdict — due early next week — is guilty of allegations of bribery when he approved a $2 million payment from FIFA to Michel Platini in 2011.