Shakhtar CEO Sergei Palkin once again confirmed that the club will file a lawsuit against FIFA with the Swiss Federal Court.
Earlier, the club sued FIFA in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) due to the fact that legionnaires of Ukrainian teams were allowed to suspend contracts for free and leave for other championships. At the same time, Shakhtar had to continue to pay money for transfers of players.
Now the sale of Mikhail Mudrik helped the club to close the debts.
– First of all, I’ll start with Mudrik, whom we sold to Chelsea. It helped us keep the club running and pay back our debts because FIFA allowed our players to leave and the clubs continued to demand payment for those players. Can you imagine? Our creditors are asking us to pay. But when I argue about how you can pay if there is no way to sell these players, they just disappeared and we have a war going on, no one cares. Therefore, this money that we received from the sale of Mudrik helped us to repay these debts. And finally, yes, we filed a lawsuit against FIFA and CAS. And immediately I realized that it is impossible to win a case against FIFA and CAS, because 80% of CAS income comes from FIFA. The CAS Board, the FIFA Representative and the Head of the Collegium in our Court have been appointed by the CAS. And the chairman was loyal. And from the first minute you understand that you are losing this case. And after that we decided to apply to the European Commission. We have already sent all the documents there. And when we receive the full package of our case from CAS, we will go directly to the Swiss Federal Court.
That’s why I don’t like it when we have an organization like FIFA that stands above everyone. We need to show the whole world that we need to be protected somehow. Yes, now we are fighting on our own, but a week ago we started holding meetings with the ECA. They became intermediaries between FIFA and Ukrainian clubs. We had two meetings. I believe that the ECA will help us find a solution. We are in the process. And a week ago we invited ECA President Nasser to come to Ukraine, meet with Ukrainian clubs, discuss our problems. Why be in an association? To help each other. If you have a problem, everyone should support you.
